


Consequences

by avulle



Series: Consequences [1]
Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra, Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, F/F, F/M, Gen, Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-02-10
Updated: 2015-02-10
Packaged: 2018-03-11 11:46:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 29
Words: 25,417
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3326243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avulle/pseuds/avulle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It wasn't supposed to happen this way—<br/>It was supposed to be different.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Eyes of Grey

**Author's Note:**

> This story has been heavily inspired by Embers, by Vathara. In particular, a large amount of the mythos surrounding spirits is borrowed from Vathara. If there's something really clever here, it likely belongs to Vathara, and not me.
> 
> Some notes on canon:  
> This story is Korra compiant (if you except the fact that Yue is Zuko's firstborn child, and not Izumi), and fully compliant with the original series. It may or may not be compliant with The Promise or The Rift (I've never read them, and cannot say), and is not even remotely compliant with The Search.
> 
> Discontinuation note:  
> As is mentioned in the tags, this story is discontinued, and I have no plans on finishing it. I deeply apologize to anyone this may inconvenience.  
> Although I wish I could take it down, I leave it up out of respect for anyone who liked it enough to kudos and bookmark it.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had seemed like a good idea at the time.
> 
> Year Three, Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Azula, Ty Lee, Aang

It had seemed like such a good idea at the time.

Teach Ty Lee energybending.

She is of the Kyoshi warriors, now.

There are some benders who are too dangerous, who can only be killed if their bending cannot be taken from them.

Her logic seemed so solid, then.

And just fallacious enough to make it believable that it came from _Ty Lee_.

No, it never occurred to him that he had also used his energybending on what had once been her best and closest friend.

That it could only be with energybending that Ty Lee could give her her bending back.

That it was only with energybending that Ty Lee could take _his_ bending from _him_.

Only with energybending that the avatar could be well and truly defeated—to a point not even the avatar state itself could help him.

It occurs to him now.

But, looking up into those cold, grey eyes, he realizes his most fundamental mistake.

It was not in teaching energybending to Ty Lee, former best friend of Azula.

It was not in teaching energybending to Ty Lee, giving her the only weapon she could use to defeat him.

It was in teaching energybending to someone with those horribly grey eyes.

Different from his, as the sun is from night.

In his eyes lies the grey of wind.

Just as in the eyes of the water tribe lies the blue of water, in the fire nation lies the gold of fire, and in the earth kingdom lies the green of earth.

He should have known, the avatars within him scream at him.

There is no airbender grey in the fire nation.

This grey is different from his grey and this grey represents _danger_.

But Ty Lee had always been so happy.

She’d always been smiling, and she had been so bright and happy—that he never noticed.

He ignored his sense of foreboding at that unnatural slate grey in her eyes.

The slate grey of his enemy—the enemy of all the spirit world.

The grey of a human with no spirit.

Dead.

Empty.

A walking corpse.

But no.

He had given her his most powerful weapon of all—and she used it, to suck his everything away into that black hole that lies within her.

Heavy footfalls catch his attention, and he turns his eyes to see Azula.

No longer Fire Princess Azula, no longer wearing her royal golds.

Just—Azula.

Smirking at him, all traces of madness gone.

Every bit of her the woman who put a bolt of lightning through his back when he was in the avatar state—every bit the woman he _feared_ because she is the first being to almost _kill_ the avatar—to break the cycle—in ten thousand years.

(In an eternity.)

He didn’t know then—but he knows now, just how close she came to succeeding.

(How she _actually_ succeeded.)

And he has no doubt that if she so desires, she could do it again.

Because the madness that crippled her is gone—the fire he stole from her returned.

And, perhaps most importantly, Ty Lee, with the grey, dead eyes and _energybending_ (he is a fool) is by her side.

She steps over his unmoving body, wraps one hand around Ty Lee’s neck, and draws her into a brutal, rough kiss.

Ty Lee, the woman who defeated him (the avatar, the strongest man in the world), melts in her arms—moaning and falling limp, weaving her own arms around Azula.

Azula releases her and Ty Lee makes a pitiful sound, but Azula doesn’t notice—she is too busy smirking at him.

 _She is mine_ , Azula’s smirk declares to him. _The woman who can beat you—the woman who_ did _beat you—belongs to me_.

Katara, Toph, and Sokka are five minutes away.

He left them behind—who could defeat the Avatar, after all?

He is fully realized, now.

He can erupt volcanos, create hurricanes that destroy continents—he should be unstoppable.

They are five minutes away, and he is completely at _Azula’s_ mercy.

Azula, who no longer has a country to fight in the name of.

Azula, who no longer has reason to temper her sadism.

Azula, who now has reason to truly _despise_ him.

But her lip simply twists with disdain, and she turns away, one arm still securely around Ty Lee.

This time, her footfalls are light, barely lighter than the rain that is falling against his face—and after they have vanished from his vision—they are gone.

It will take five minutes for Appa to reach him.

It will take one hundred and eight days for him to discover a way to reverse Ty Lee’s energybending.

But he will never be able to forget the cold, emptiness that lies within him, now.

And he will never attempt capture Azula or Ty Lee again.


	2. Blood in the Water

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He doesn't know how she found out.
> 
> Year Three, Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zuko, Ty Lee

He doesn’t know how she found out.

He hasn’t made a point of telling people what he was forced to do to his sister.

That the most powerful of the prisons in the fire nation failed to hold her.

That he called upon the avatar to _suck_ her spirit straight out of her.

No, he has not made a point of publicizing this fact.

For all that the fire nation may have hated her.

They would hate this fact even more.

The idea that someone could take their bending away from them—the hundred years war would look like a picnic.

Blood would run in the streets.

They would burn the entire _world_ to the ground.

And really—he can’t find it within himself to blame them.

So he has not told anyone—save that Avatar himself—just what, exactly, he was forced to do.

And yet—

“You took her bending away from her.”

It’s the first time he has ever seen Ty Lee’s face twisted with hate.

He didn’t know it was possible, and it is the most terrifying thing he has ever seen.

“You took her _fire_ away from her.”

He can’t move.

She hasn’t touched him yet, but he cannot move.

Her first blow drives the air from his lungs and it _hurts_.

Chi-blocking isn’t supposed to _hurt_.

But it does.

With every strike, his body is wracked with pain.

He would cry out, but he can’t.

He is still unable to draw breath.

It is only when darkness begins to cloud his vision that she stops.

One last blow, and his lungs are free again.

His lungs—and nothing else.

He gulps in the air and tries to scream—but finds himself unable.

He’s not surprised.

There is a reason that his father so favored chi-blockers for assassinations.

For torture.

For—well, anything really.

Firebenders are well and good for war.

For armies.

For big, flashy things you are okay with everyone knowing about.

But they are not good at subtlety.

Spywork.

Chi-blockers are.

Staring up into cold, hateful grey eyes, realization dawns on him.

Ty Lee.

With the six identical siblings.

All with smiles of heart-wrenching innocence.

 _All_ , trained in the art of chi-blocking.

If he could laugh, he would.

“She had to lose,” Ty Lee tells him. “And I understood—” her voice breaks, “—that she could die.”

She shifts her feet, right before the left, right leg slightly bent.

“But you,” she says, her eyes blazing, “you had to do something even worse.”

She raises her hands—her right thumb against his forehead, the other against his chest.

He shakes his head.

_No._

He struggles against his paralysis—and he knows that’s it useless, but—

He looks up into her eyes, and he presses past her hatred, and he _pleads_ with her.

_No, please don’t._

He mouths it—hoping she can read his lips.

The barest hints of a murderous smile pass her lips, and he knows that she _heard_ —that she _understood_.

But she doesn’t even hesitate.

And then he can _feel_ her.

A horrible, sucking emptiness.

And he fights.

He fights and he fights—but it doesn’t matter.

He can move again, but it doesn’t matter.

He can scream, and beg, and weep, again.

But it doesn’t matter.

Because he knows that he will never, ever be warm again.

His breaths are shallow, and he can’t even seem to fill his own lungs.

He clutches at his chest with his newly freed arms, and he weeps.

It will be three hours before one of his guards find him.

It will be two hundred and sixty-one days before Aang discovers how to reverse Ty Lee’s energybending, and returns his fire to him.

It will be five hours before he enters his father’s cell, and puts him out of his misery.


	3. Child of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It had to happen eventually.
> 
> Year Six, Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Ty Lee, Mai

It had to happen eventually.

Mai knew that Azula was not the kind of woman to just roll over and disappear.

However much Mai may or may not have wanted her to do exactly that.

She was free.

She had her bending back.

It had to happen eventually.

“Oh Zuzu,” she singsongs, stepping out onto the arena.

Exactly as Mai remembers her.

As terrifying as she always has been.

Except—she curses under her breath, and turns to her husband to watch his expression harden.

Azula’s hair is tied up in a topknot, with her bangs swept behind her ears, her hair flowing long down her back.

She is five years older than the last time Mai saw her.

And she has never looked more like Ursa.

Azula cackles, holding both of her arms out, and lighting blue fire in each palm.

“Come on, brother dear. Won’t you come down and _play_?”

Zuko is out of his seat (out of their box) before she can stop him.

“I’m here to restore my _honor_ ,” she continues, extinguishing her flames and bowing deeply to him.

“You would understand that, _right_?”

A giggle sounds to her right, and a heavy weight settles upon her arm.

A small arm wraps around her shoulders, and a smiling face twists itself into her vision.

“Well, won’t this be fun?”

Mai doesn’t need to look to know all of her guards are unconscious.

She supposes that she should be happy they’re not dead.

She supposes that _she_ should be happy she’s not dead.

She has no bending to steal, after all.

And even if she did, it would take all of ten days to summon the Avatar, and have her bending restored to her.

“What was it like?”

Ty Lee’s voice is smooth, cold, and deadly.

Her face has vanished from Mai’s vision, but Mai is certain she knows _exactly_ what it looks like.

She is not Zuko, after all.

And she _has_ seen Ty Lee’s face, when it is twisted with hate, and rage.

What it looks like, when she has about to end someone’s life.

“Lying with him—when he was cold as _ice_ , and nothing you could do could ever warm him.”

There was an earthbender who got lucky, once.

Even Azula wasn’t perfect.

There is a low, dark chuckle in her ear.

“You’re worried I’m going to take my revenge on you?”

It was the first time Mai learned that it is easier to _kill_ with chi-blocking than it is to _incapacitate_.

A single blow, and he choked on air.

“Oh, _Mai_.”

She had never been so horrified in her life.

“I already have.”

Mai shudders, and returns her gaze to the arena below her.

She sees Azula, head bowed, fist pressed to the ground.

A prayer to Agni—the beginning of every Agni Kai.

“That _fool_ ,” she whispers.

She doesn’t know how Azula managed to convince him—but what a _fool_.

Ty Lee giggles into her ear.

“ _Honestly_. Against a sane Azula—how could he ever think he could win?”

Ty Lee’s hand dips into Mai’s robes, and Mai’s chest constricts in fear.

She feels Ty Lee’s fingers glance over her sternum, dipping down into her solarplexus—the one pressure point Mai has only ever seen Ty Lee utilize once (a sight she will never be able to forget).

But Ty Lee’s hand continues harmlessly past it, and a sleek, slender blade is lifted before her eyes.

Past it, she sees Azula raise her eyes—and, for an instant, her eyes are mad.

Just as they were when Mai turned against her, and when Ty Lee struck her down.

Just as her eyes were when she _lost_ to her _useless_ brother and a water tribe _peasant_.

Ty Lee raises Mai’s blade gracefully, and with a casual flick of the wrist, sends it flying straight at Azula.

But then Azula’s eyes refocus, and a smirk tugs at the corners of her painted lips.

Mai watches in horror as the blade begins to soften, and then melt, before a gust of searingly hot wind explodes outward, and the molten lump that was once one of her most beloved blades falls to the arena floor with a sickening splat.

Ty Lee giggles again, and whispers something Mai can’t quite make out.

But Azula apparently can, because she straightens gracefully, mouth now twisted into a full-0n smirk, eyes never leaving Ty Lee’s.

Mai grits her teeth, and sighs.

It took the _avatar_ the better part of a year to figure out how to reverse Ty Lee’s energybending.

And he _swore_ that he would be the only one capable of it.

Azula of the sapphire flame would _not_ be released upon the world once more, he said.

Only _I_ would be able to do that, so there’s no need to worry, he said.

And yet—

Azula of the sapphire flame has undoubtedly returned.

In all of her psychotic glory.

She feels Ty Lee’s hand tense on her shoulder, and she knows that she is not alone.

The Azula that led them around the world—in a hunt for the avatar (a hunt for the most powerful being alive)—and never once gave them cause to doubt their eventual success is before them once more.

Mai’s blood sings in response to Azula’s sharp, controlled blasts of fire.

Ty Lee’s breath is sharp in her ear, and Mai can feel the tremors run through the arm that is draped across her shoulder.

It was always the one thing they could agree on.

Even though Ty Lee loved the world that Mai so intensely despised—they never disagreed about this.

Zuko is strong.

Stronger, perhaps, than his father was, at the height of his power.

His fireblasts are strong and precise, and his form perfect.

He is the _lord_ of _fire_ , and not just in name.

But he is no Azula.

Mai shivers, and has to concentrate on keeping her emotionless mask.

Red and blue fire colliding and explode before them, fireworks that would be heartwrenchingly beautiful if they weren’t so lethal.

(Perhaps, like Azula, they are both).

It is not a surprise, she supposes, that the only two people who can make her feel the fire inherent in her blood are siblings.

And although she will never tell him—she knows it is not Zuko who makes her inner fire burn the brightest.

(But he makes her content—and he makes her happy—and she has learned that _that_ is more than enough.)

(She made that decision five years ago, on boiling rock.)

“She treats me like a queen, you know.”

Azula, Mai notices, is not bending lightning.

“She lets me touch her, and kiss her—lets me lie with her while she sleeps.”

Azula, Mai notices, is only blocking Zuko’s flames—never responding with attacks of her own.

“She even makes an effort at being gentle.”

Ty Lee rises gracefully before her, smiling faintly over her shoulder at her (a smile Mai has never been privy to—and suspects only one person has ever been privy to).

“Every day, she tells me that she loves me.”

With slow, deliberate grace, she places her hands on the railing (not even bothering to look down to where Zuko is raging and Azula is cackling but never retaliating), carefully lifting herself into the air.

“She doesn’t kill, she doesn’t torture—” Ty Lee sighs, carefully turning herself to face the fight, “—she’s terrified that I’ll disapprove, and that I’ll leave her.”

Mai watches as Azula’s eyes flicker from Zuko’s.

A lethal mistake, had she been anyone else.

(But the fact remains that she’s not.)

(So it is not.)

Mai can’t quite help but snort.

(Azula, looking to Ty Lee for _permission_. What a laughable concept.)

Ty Lee titters in response, undoubtedly flashing a wide, innocent smile.

Azula turns back to her brother just in time to brush away a fireball as large as she, her painted lips once again curled into a malicious smirk.

She begins to move forward now, matching Zuko blast for blast, step for step.

“Maybe one day,” Ty Lee says, “I’ll tell her she doesn’t have to worry.”

 _But that day is_ not _today_ , Ty Lee does not say, but Mai hears regardless.

Everyone always assumed that pretty, adorable little Ty Lee was the innocent one.

The nice one.

Good cop, to her and Azula’s bad cop.

Mai chuckles lowly, and Ty Lee turns her head back to her, lips turned up in the perfect imitation of an innocent smile.

It was never true, of course.

Azula (and Mai, for that matter), would never have had any use for someone so disgustingly _good_.

Someone so disgustingly innocent.

Because they always knew what happens when people get between Ty Lee and what Ty Lee wants.

(This time, the only collateral damage was a Fire Lord and an Avatar—they should count themselves lucky.)

And apparently, Ty Lee wants Azula to _hurt_.

Apparently, Ty Lee hasn’t yet _forgiven_ Azula for what she did to her at the circus, and what she repeatedly did to her as they crossed the Earth Kingdom.

Mai has never been happier that she is not Azula as she is at this moment, looking upon the unfailingly innocent smile of what had once been her closest friend.

“I forgive you, by the way,” Ty Lee says, turning back to Zuko’s increasingly desperate attempts to hold onto his honor.

(It seems that he has finally realized that Azula has yet to fire directly at him.)

Mai lets out a measured breath of relief.

“It wasn’t really your fault anyways,” Ty Lee continues as Zuko is pressed back to the edge of the arena. “After all, if you’d learned what he’d done, then, _well_.”

Mai is glad that she didn’t.

Because she really has no idea what she would have done.

Below them, Azula blasts away Zuko’s last fireball, and plants a hand on Zuko’s chest.

For a moment, she does nothing, and the entire arena holds its breath.

(Mai’s chest clenches painfully.)

“She even cuts her fingernails for me,” Ty Lee points out brightly—her high, chirpy voice echoing throughout the arena.

Mai looks down, and notices that it is true—Azula’s fingers do not draw blood on Zuko’s chest.

But with that, the moment is shattered, and fire blooms under Azula’s fingers.

Mai’s breath catches in her chest.

The fire that blooms under Azula’s hand is not blue, but a pale orange—only strong enough to leave only the barest hints of a burn.

(It is the closest and Agni Kai can be to bloodless.)

Zuko is only knocked off balance, and Azula reaches forward and plucks his crown from his topknot before he tumbles to the grass below.

The crown that is now hers, by right.

By the most ancient laws of the kingdom, she is now—Fire Lord Azula.

(May Agni have mercy on their souls.)

The arena is silent once more, this time not in surprise but in pure, cold-blooded terror.

But Azula’s face when it turns back to her (turns back to Ty Lee) it is frighteningly open, and insecure.

Mai, for the first time, can see terror in Azula’s eyes.

(Perhaps it is not such a surprise that Azula used such a gentle flame on Zuko but that she had used one at all.)

But Ty Lee simply cartwheels, seemingly seeing nothing surprising, and whispers (this time too low to echo throughout the arena but not low enough to be inaudible to _her_ ), “ _It’s okay—I love you_.”

Azula swiftly turns away—expression hardening back into its usual mask of contempt.

She raises the crown to her topknot, curls one of the sharp edges around the tie holding it in place, and pulls.

Her hair falls around her face, and she holds the crown before her—held carefully with the sides of her fingeripts along its rim (so that no fingerprints mar its surface).

(As if proper.)

“You can keep it,” she declares loudly—not to Zuko, sprawled on the ground below her, but to the spectators staring on in shocked horror (to the Fire Nation—to the entire world).

She then closes her first around Zuko’s crown—the crown of the fire nation (a crown that has belonged to the fire lords as long as there have been fire lords—that has seen hundreds of Agni Kai’s and never once been affected by heat)—and throws the molten slag of what was once the greatest crown in the four nations to the ground.

Ty Lee giggles darkly and Mai can’t help but stare at the golden heap on the ground of the ring.

 _Azula_.

 


	4. Sleeping in Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waiting for them is not what he had expected.
> 
> Year Three, Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The idea of firebending sucking the life out of a person, inspired by Magma, by MikariStar
> 
> Characters: Azula

Waiting for them is not what he had expected.

Although it is most definitely a camp—there is no one to be found.

No tent, no bedrolls—just two bags, covered in a heavy tarp, and a fire.

Rumors had spread quickly.

No one knows who started them, but everyone knew of them.

 _Azula is alive_ , they said.

 _Azula is free_ , they said.

 _Azula is back_ , they said.

She had been seen in a nearby village—buying provisions, and not bothering to hide her golden eyes or regal bearing.

(Although, the reports say, she did not bear the regal topknot.)

(A woman who turned down the crown of fire lord, he supposes, has no use of one.)

She was taunting them, he is certain.

And here is their camp—his Earthbenders have promised him this—but they are nowhere to be found.

Tonight is a new moon, and there are two hours left before dawn.

The sun has yet to even hint about brightening the horizon.

It is the one time firebenders are at their most vulnerable.

With his fifty men, he can almost imagine that he’ll win.

(Almost.)

They have no official orders to be here.

They are simply—performing a training exercise.

Survival training, of course.

And their weapons—well—there are beasts in these forests.

You never know what one might stumble upon.

Perhaps an exiled fire nation princess that once brought this kingdom to its knees.

And if they kill her—well—no one would care anymore.

She has made an enemy of _every_ nation.

She has no companions, no one who will mourn her demise.

(Save one, of course.)

(But no one will mourn her either.)

His men have been silent—no official channels have been used.

She couldn’t have possibly known.

She should be barely even coherent—he has heard stories of what happens to firebenders in these moments before twilight on the night of a new moon.

He resists the urge to scream in frustration.

“Well, I’m _almost_ impressed.”

His men all jump at the sound of the ghostly whisper.

The sound coming from—

The campfire.

“All of this for little old _me_?”

She steps out of the flames.

The flames that are far too large for a campfire.

Flames that are more than big enough for one person to stand in, hidden from view.

“ _Well_. It’s nice to know the Earth Kingdom hasn’t gone _soft_ in all these years I’ve been gone.”

Her bare feet move soundlessly over the broken stone that makes up the _massive_ firepit.

Broken stone that he should have realized was moved recently—this clearing should not have such a convenient bed of stone.

“But I tire of this game,” she proclaims. “And I tire of you.”

The fires behind her flash a brilliant, blinding blue, for just an instant.

“ _Leave_ me.”

He almost obeys, simply out of reflex.

That is the tone of a commanding officer—demanding nothing less than immediate obedience.

But he is not _quite_ that weak.

There are fifty of them, and one of her.

(Two—he can make out a small shape, curled into a ball in the flames.)

He tries not to wonder how her flames burn blue even in these sunless hours, or how it is that she walks through flames undamaged.

They have a mission—even if it is not official.

They have a country’s honor to reclaim—and they will not allow her to wander free in their land.

He raises his hand to signal the attack—

“This is what is going to happen,” she interrupts him, voice lethally smooth. “You can leave now,” she slices an arm across her chest, “take your wounded,” he hears his men gasp, “and live.”

He looks about himself—and sees a swath of his men collapsed, breaths shallow.

“Or, you can _all_ die.”

His men are turning blue, and shivering, as if the very life has been sucked out of them.

“It will _not_ be a quick and painless death.”

He has fought in the hundred years war.

He has fought hundred of firebenders, and beaten them with his own two hands.

But he has never seen a firebender take a person down without touching them.

He has never seen a firebender turn a man blue with a gesture.

He shifts his hand into the sign for retreat.

There is no point fighting a battle you cannot win.

There are no innocents at their backs.

No reason to give their lives.

“Good choice,” she commends him, her tone only _mildly_ condescending.

As his men begin to circle the camp once more, a low, sleepy groan sounds from within the fire.

Everyone freezes, and Azula’s gaze goes from condescending to murderously cold.

“Azula,” a voice slurs out. “What are you doing? Come back to—” the voice peters out and a small, pale hand reaches out from the fire and gropes about for a moment before closing around Azula’s ankle.

Azula doesn’t turn away from them, but the voice that passes through her lips is remarkably soft.

“It’s nothing, Ty. Go back to sleep.”

His men have found their wits again, and are moving faster, picking up their brethren and vanishing into the forest.

Another moan sounds from within the fire, and the hand begins to tug Azula’s ankle back into the fire.

It is in this moment that he finally sees the absurdity of the situation.

Fifty of his country’s best trained warriors have been scared away by a single _girl_ —barely even a woman—dressed in pink pajamas.

The last of his men escape into the forest, and he backs into the shadows.

The womans eyes never leave his, even as she mutters, “Yes, I love you too. Go back to sleep.”

A new rumor starts the next day.

Of women who can steal the warmth of a man with a gesture, and who sleep in flames.

(Nobody mentions the second inhabitant of the fire.)


	5. Fire of Blue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She is born under the full moon, with hair that is completely white.
> 
> Year Two, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zuko

She is born under a full moon, with hair that is completely white.

Her eyes are blue, and her pupils are red.

The doctor tell him that it is a medical condition, with a name that he does not bother to remember.

(It will eventually be named after her, but that will be much, much later.)

He names her Yue.

After the princess he couldn’t save—

(After the moon he let die.)

It does little to bolster relations with the Northern Water Tribe, but when he walks with her under the moon, he can feel her approval.

They call him prophetic when five years later, under the light of the full moon, Yue bends fire for the first time—breathing fire of white and blue into the tapestries above her bed.

But he only feels the cold chill of fear.

Because unlike his servants, his nobles, and his _people_ , he remembers.

He remembers that Azula also first bent fire under a full moon—breathing fire of white and blue into the tapestries above her bed.

And when Yue is unable to sleep during the full moon—performing firebending katas with the grace and perfection of a prodigy—and the people are awed at the accuracy of his prediction—he is filled with cold, hard terror.

Because he knows of only one other firebender that can’t sleep under the full moon.

A firebender, who, as a child, would meditate beside a blue fire in her chambers because she was altogether too _smart_ to reveal she felt the pull of a lesser spirit.

Yue is kind,gentle, and good, but he can’t look at her golden eyes without seeing Azula’s.

(He can’t look at her without _hating_ her, just a little.)

He swore he would not become his father when he took the throne.

That he would treat his children _better_ than his father treated _him_.

That he would love them, and not mistreat them.

So he leaves her care to Mai.

(Because he cannot trust himself.)

Because Mai loved Azula.

(Because Mai loves Azula still.)

And Yue—who is as much their child as she is Azula’s—she will love all the more for her blue flames, and prodigious skill.

In the dark of night, Mai quietly promises him that Yue will never have cause to believe her mother doesn’t love her.

 _But she will have cause to believe her father doesn’t_ , she doesn’t say.

But he knows it to be true.

Yue bends lightning at seven.

Although few ever realize it, the third firebending form ends with a lightning strike, when performed properly.

(Although few ever do.)

When Yue arrives in his throne room, face split into a grin, and shows it to him, he only barely manages to keep himself from flinching.

She notices anyway.

(She’s just as smart, as clever, as Azula was.)

(As Azula no doubt _remains_.)

She never tries to firebend in front of him again.

But she does weep, into the arms of servants, and asks why her father doesn’t love her.

Why her father isn’t proud of her—even though she’s worked so hard.

The palace’s staff turns against him overnight.

(It is yet another thing Azula has stolen from him—and he can’t help but hate her for it.)

Their bows aren’t quite as deep, their tones not quite so reverential.

And they are always _there_ whenever he is with Yue.

In the shadows, in the passages.

He wonders what they worry that he will do.

He wonders what they would try to do if he did it.

(He wonder where they were when his father was Fire Lord, and burned off half of his face.)

And so, perhaps, it is his fault.

He never went to her firebending practice.

He never wanted to know.

So nobody told him when her primary instructor fell ill.

Nobody told him of the young woman who came to replace him.

The young woman with the golden eyes, and the blue fire.

No matter that there should only be one such woman—no, nobody else seemed to think it was supsicious.

And nobody told him.

(Because he didn’t want to know.)

It will be something he will regret until the end of his days.

It will be something that will cost him his family, his throne, and his country.

But that isn’t until later.


	6. Shame of a Nation

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is the fastest Agni Kai for succession in history.
> 
> Year Sixteen, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zuko, OFC (Yue)

It is the fastest Agni Kai for succession in history.

It lasts thirty-two seconds, from beginning to end.

It is not a grand fight for one’s honor.

It is not a battle for the honor of one’s ancestors.

It is a military coup.

Nothing more, nothing less.

It reeks of Azula.

It feels exactly like her coup of Ba Sing Se.

Zuko would know.

(He was there.)

Yue’s eyes are hard as she regards him.

Zuko, in this moment, understands why Zhao attacked him from behind.

He understands the desperation.

The feeling that you have to _cheat_ to win.

Yue drops to her haunches, and extends her hand towards him.

For _his_ crown.

(The crown that now legally belongs to her.)

“Don’t make me kill you, father,” she whispers.

There is an instant of sadness on her face, in her blue eyes and red pupils, before it is smoothed into cold neutrality that he knows all too well.

She is fourteen.

He is thirty-two.

He is not naive enough to believe that she will not do it.

( _You are not_ worthy _of the title of fire lord, father._ )

( _I challenge you to an Agni Kai._ )

“Why?” he croaks out, making no move to remove his crown.

She sighs and straightens, regarding the crowd about them.

Her pants are a pale blue, and white, in comparison to his red and black.

(She has taken her name in stride, and worn it with pride.)

(Her entire wardrobe consists entirely of fire nation clothes, made especially in pale blues and whites.)

(It goes beautifully with her deathly pale skin, and white hair.)

(She is a thing of beauty, and he occasionally has to wonder how she came from him.)

“Did Azula put you up to this?”

He can feel tears leaking from the corner of his eyes, and he wonders if this is how Azula felt when Ty Lee betrayed her.

“Aunt Azula?” she asks, laughing mirthlessly, and still _not_ looking at him. “Of course she did, father. She wanted me to do it the moment I turned thirteen.”

He hears a choked cry wring itself from his throat.

“But I was willing to give you the benefit of the doubt, father. I believed that you would put our country first. That you would be what our people needed.”

She turns back to him, and looks down upon him with disdain.

“I was mistaken.”

It hits him like a physical blow.

“You never stopped being the avatar’s friend first, and our leader second.”

Blue flames flicker at her palms and she throws them out to her sides.

“You use the fire nation’s resources to build another nation. You waste our army’s time, fighting another nation’s wars.”

A growl makes its way from her mouth.

“You prostrate us, so the other nations will not see us as a threat. You acquiesce to their demands for our greatest generals!”

She flicks her hand decsively, and every flame in the arena burns blue.

“You sacrificed your sister, declared her guilty of war crimes at the age of _fourteen_ , father. You allowed the avatar to use his godless energybending against our own citizens.”

She kneels before him once more.

“You are a shame to our nation and our people, and I will stand for it no longer.”

She extends her hand to him once more.

“ _Give me my crown._ ”

He rolls his head to the side, reaches up, and plucks his crown from his hair.

He can hear the fire sages foots steps on the steps of the ring.

He closes his eyes, and drops the crown into his daughter’s waiting hand.

In a voice that is barely even a whisper, he hears her say, “Thank you, father.”

It doesn’t make him feel any better.


	7. Lord of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Something needs to be done about Fire Lord Yue.
> 
> Year Seventy-Six, Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Korra, Asami, OFC (Yue)

Something needs to be done about Fire Lord Yue.

It’s a pretty common sentiment among the Earth Kingdom, the Water Tribes, the Air Nomads, and even the United Republic of Nations.

Korra has been hearing it to varying degrees since she discovered she was the avatar, and perhaps even before that.

The Northern Water Tribe, she knows, does not appreciate her name, and seems to take personal offense to her habit of firebending under the full moon.

It is no particular surprise, however.

She isn’t the Fire Lord’s biggest fan, either.

 _I will not protect any city that does not bear my flag_ , Korra recalls being told.

Half the Earth Kingdom was burning, and the Fire Lord had the audacity to claim that it _wasn’t_ her problem.

So she’s been avoiding this.

She didn’t actually want to come.

The White Lotus has been more than sufficient to teach her firebending.

She had no need to come to the _fire nation_ , with its cold, unfeeling Fire Lord who bends fire under the full moon.

But _Asami_ said that the avatar had a duty to all of the four nations, not just the ones she liked.

Stupid Asmi.

Stupid Asmi with her stupid logic and her stupid nakedness being stupidly convincing.

“Avatar Korra.”

The Fire Lord’s voice is soft, but not particularly kind.

“Fire Lord Yue.”

She looks young, Korra thinks.

Younger than she has any right to be, having known Avatar Aang (having _banished_ Avatar Aang)—and being older than Tenzin.

“To what do I owe this _pleasure_ , avatar?”

Korra tightens her grip on Asami’s hand, and receives a comforting squeeze in return.

 _You can do this_ , Asami had said.

But looking up at the Fire Lord’s remarkably disconcerting blue eyes (blue eyes that are not natural, and are all wrong), Korra isn’t convinced.

“I, uh—” she pauses, glancing at Asami once more, “—came to pay my respects.”

She sounds nervous, and she hates that she sounds nervous, but the Fire Lord has all the presence of Toalak, Unalaq, Zaheer, and Kuvira bundled up in one, glaring down at her from her throne.

“Consider them _paid_ , avatar.”

Korra just barely manages to keep from flinching.

“Asami Sato,” the Fire Lord says, turning her eyes to Asami as if Korra is nothing but the scum on her boot.

Korra can’t quite help but step forward, half-shielding Asami from the Fire Lord’s cold and uncaring gaze.

The Fire Lord’s pale lips curl into a decidedly _un_ -kind smile.

“You are, of course, always welcome here. The Fire Nation will _always_ shelter its own.”

Korra almost chokes.

She forgets, occasionally, that Republic City was once the fire nation colony of Yu Dao, and that its oldest families are directly descended from Fire Nation colonists.

That the Fire Nation still has a bad habit of claiming the citizens of United Republic of Nations as their own.

(For all the help that they gave when Republic City was under attack by the Earth Empire.)

That, more than anything, despite Asami’s green eyes and complete lack of firebending, she is directly descended from the first of the fire nation colonists in Yu Dao.

(From Fire Nation nobles.)

(Possibly even the Fire Lords themselves.)

Asami just blinks once before smiling a small smile (the smile she smiles at boardrooms filled with old men who think they’re better than her right before she proves them wrong).

“If you consider _me_ one of your own,” Asami says, taking a step forward, untangling their fingers, and wrapping her arm tightly around Korra’s waist, “then surely you must extend my _wife_ the same courtesy.”

Yue’s eyebrows rise minutely, and then a feral, predatory smirk crawls across her face.

She leans forward, pulling her glasses from her face, and turning her gaze—her _blind_ gaze, Korra finally realizes—to Korra.

“So indeed I must.”

Asami’s arm tightens around Korra’s midsection, keeping her from taking a step back.

“Korra, wife of Asami,” she declares, her voice clear, regal and now ringing with power, and Korra feels the firebender within her sing, and this time, Asami’s arm keeps her from taking a step forward, “Welcome to the Fire Nation.”

The fires in the throne room draw themselves up, as if straightening their spines in the presence of their lord, and, for the first time, Korra can feel it.

Now, she _understands_.

She is in the presence of the _Fire Lord_.

The _Lord_ of _Fire_.

“You will always have a home here.”

And Korra is reminded of the three cities on the southern border of the United Republic of Nations that Raiko abandoned beneath Kuvira’s threat.

The three cities with governors, who, in an act of what could only be desperation, rose the flag of the Fire Nation.

The three cities that were _not_ taken, the three cities that were deemed too _unimportant_ to be taken.

The three cities that Kuvira _never_ talked about.


	8. Tale of Three Cities

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It wasn't supposed to happen this way.
> 
> Year Seventy-Four, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Kuvira

It wasn’t supposed to happen this way.

It was supposed to be _easy_.

A first step on the path to truly reclaiming the Earth Kingdom.

Three cities unimportant enough that President Raiko could be scared into giving them up.

Three cities unknown enough the avatar wouldn’t think to come to protect them.

She is Kuvira, head of the Earth Empire, and it was never supposed to be this hard.

It all started with a flag.

A horrible, treasonous flag—far worse than the United Republic of Nations flag they had flown the day before.

Begging for help from a nation that had conquered and subjugated them for over a century—

A disgrace.

So she rushed.

She didn’t wait for her spirit vine cannon.

Her army had never been less than sufficient before.

Three cities, abandoned by their nation—begging for help that would never come.

They wouldn’t stand a chance.

(She was so sure.)

She was wrong.

She wasn’t _prepared_ for an army of faceless, masked soldiers that did not declare their element on their sleeve.

She wasn’t _prepared_ for airbenders willing to kill, or metal benders that bent boiling, liquid metal.

She lost a batallion to _flour_.

Flour, a batallion of airbenders, and a single spark.

She learned just how useless unbendable metal was when faced with firebenders who didn’t care, because it conducted heat just fine.

(It conducted _lightning_ just fine.)

She learned that fighting airbenders and earthbenders did not prepare one for fighting _firebenders_ —soldiers who had harnessed the element of _violence_.

She learned that the United Republic was not the only nation who had soldiers of every element.

She learned that her metalbenders could not bend _liquid_ metal because it was earth possessed by _fire_.

She learned that her three years experience of crushing bandits did not prepare her for the defense of a country that had fought a lifetime of _war_.

She learned fear, when faced with a sky that rained blue fire, earth that betrayed her, and dust that combusted with the force of a spirit vine explosion.

So when her spirit vine cannon was finally completed, she did not turn to the three cities that had _defied_ her, and turned to their greatest _enemy_ (their greatest shame), but to Republic City, with its _avatar_ —because she would rather face the spirit of the world itself than the Fire Nation once more.


	9. The Return of the Moonslayer

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is likely a coincidence that it happens during a full lunar eclipse.
> 
> Year Eighty-Four, Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zhao

It is likely a coincidence that it happens during a full lunar eclipse.

It is likely a coincidence that he just happens to appear at the exact moment when the Northern Water Tribe is at its most vulnerable.

It is likely a coincidence that because of this, no less than fifty of the most elite nonbenders the Northern Water Tribe has to witness his return.

He appears rather suddenly, about halfway through the eclipse, just over forty feet in the air, just under one hundred feet from the walls.

There are cries of horror and fear, because not only it is in the middle of a lunar eclipse, but it is in the middle of the arctic winter—and without waterbenders, falling into the sea means nothing short of death.

There are three master firebenders on the wall, along with two master earthbenders and two master airbenders that the Northern Water Tribe has borrowed from the White Lotus to aid in their night of greatest need.

But not even they can save someone who has fallen deep into the ocean in the middle of an arctic winter without the assistance of a waterbender.

And there will be no waterbenders in the Northern Water Tribe for another two hours.

(This is the worst eclipse in centuries, and perhaps the timing is not such a coincidence after all.)

But then the ocean _moves_ in a way that it should _not_ , not with the moon still dyed its deepest red, and the man rises from the waves.

They are too shocked, at first, to recognize his clothing.

They are too intent upon the elegant motions of his arms as the ocean cedes to his will, lifting him up, and out of the water, moving him slowly towards the wall.

Under the darkened light of the moon the colors of his uniform are muted to a deep burgundy, and the guardians of the wall in the Northern Water Tribe’s most dire hour are struck speechless.

It takes him a solid five minutes to make his way to the wall, the wave beneath his feet lifting him and planting him gently on the top, and not a single guard can take their eyes off of him.

(They do, however, have the forethought to call for reinforcements.)

(It will take twenty minutes for the first batallion of benders to arrive.)

His grey hair shines in the muted red light as he turns his head between the two groups the guards have divided themselves into.

Having apparently decided upon his preferred side, he turns fully to a woman who happens to be a United Republic of Nations firebender, and asks, “What year is it?”

The woman shifts uncomfortably and tilts her head back and forth.

“It’s, uh—it’s the year of the Monkey, sir.”

She doesn’t know why she feels the need to append sir, but the man that stands before them undoubtedly commands it.

None of them are old enough to recognize his armor in this light, but it is most surely military, and it is always best err on the side of caution when dealing with people who break fundamental laws of nature.

The man’s brow furrows, however, and he spends a long moment surveying the guards surrounding him, tapping lightly on his chin.

Then he smiles, as if he’s finally come upon the question he wishes to ask.

“How long has it been since the moon was killed?”

The guards flinch as one.

The death of the moon spirit is not something that is _spoken of_.

It is the greatest failure of the Northern Water Tribe—perhaps throughout all of history, surpassing even Unalaq’s foolish plots for world domination.

(It is also the greatest sin of the fire nation, and the reason the Northern Water Tribe still refuses to sign any form of peace treaty.)

The woman that the man is directing his questions to swallows heavily.

“I—I’m not sure—” she glances about herself, seeking help from her other guards.

“A month, a year, a decade?” he presses on.

It is a nonbending soldier of the northern water tribe that responds.

“It has been eighty-four years since the moon spirit was slain, and Princess Yue sacrificed herself to return it to us.”

He does not append sir.

“Eighty-four years,” the man repeats, heaving a heavy sigh, and turning his gaze to the blood-red moon above them. “I suppose it could be worse.”

There is a long moment of silence, as the man regards the blood red moon above them.

“Who—” the soldier’s voice falters as the man’s face snaps to him, “who _are_ you?”

The man returns his gaze to moon, sighs once more, and draws his hands before him.

“My name is Zhao.”

His hands alight in orange fire, finally throwing his armor into sharp relief.

It is the dark red and black of the fire nation, with the gold trim of an officer.

It is a design that was retired by Zuko as one of his first acts as fire lord.

It is the armor of the one hundred years war.

“The Moon Slayer,” he continues somberly, staring up at the moon that he once killed.

But far more distressing than his armor are his eyes—all-encompassing black pools of nothingness, like the depths of the ocean.

Even in the orange glow of his hands they reflect no light, and the guards realize why, exactly he can bend under a lunar eclipse.

Why, exactly, he has returned to this plane under a total lunar eclipse—when Tui’s power is at its weakest.

When Tui wouldn’t be able to stop her killer from walking among the living once more.

Because they know that as much as Tui and La are lovers, they are also mortal enemies—and their love is composed primarily of hatred.

Zhao extinguishes his hands, and, with a single gesture, draws the ocean up to meet him.

He steps off the wall once more, and no one moves to stop him.

None of them are arrogant enough to intercede in the dealings of spirits.

(None of them are as arrogant as Zhao once was.)

(It will cost them more than they can imagine.)


	10. Audience of Fire

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He arrives before the messenger hawks.
> 
> Year Eighty-Four, Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zhao, OFC (Yue)

He arrives before the messenger hawks.

Their only warning is when a wave summon itself from the sea, and carries itself over the armaments standing at the entrace of the bay.

Nobody is close enough to see the lone figure who is atop it, but half the population of the caldera sees the wave.

However, when he steps from the sea and onto the sand, the fire lord is waiting for him.

He doesn’t recognize her, at first.

She is wearing robes of deep blues and stark whites, her hair is as white as snow, and her eyes are ice blue.

For a moment, he does not even realize she is of the fire nation.

For a moment, he mistakes her for Yue (dead as he may have believed her to be).

But his eyes make their way to her headpiece, which is still gold and utterly unchanged from the last time he saw it eighty-four years ago, and his inner fire twists and burns and pulls.

He falls to a knee and bows his head.

“My lord.”

“Admiral Zhao,” she responds.

Her voice is quiet enough that he has to strain to hear it, but there is an undercurrent of iron in it, and he knows that he is not mistaken.

“You are hereby stripped of your titles, your lands, and are dishonorably discharged from the Fire Nation Navy.”

Zhao does not raise his face, and he has to close his hands into fists to keep from summoning the sea to swallow her whole.

“ _Rise_ , commoner Zhao.”

He does so, meeting her cold blue eyes, and she does not flinch away from the dark emptiness of his eyes.

He has, in his life, met Azula on three occasions—heard her voice on three occasions.

And the woman before him, despite be dressed in what can only be described as water tribe finery, carries her voice, her bearing and her authority.

He can be forgiven, perhaps, for believing that it was Azula, and not Zuko, who succeeded Ozai, and that that the woman before him is her heir.

(He is at least half right.)

(She is, without a doubt, Azula’s heir in every way that matters.)

“You are hereby _pardoned_ for any crimes commited during the hundred years war, up to and including the killing of the moon spirit, the burning of Wan Shi Tong’s library, and the attempted to murder of my father, Lord Zuko, on the basis of _time served_.”

He keeps his face carefully neutral.

“Do you understand, commoner Zhao?”

“Yes, your majesty.” He bows his head. “You are most gracious.”

“Gracious I am not,” she corrects him sharply, and he rises his head to meet her eyes again. “The spirits have clearly forgiven you for your transgressions. Who are we, mere humans, to judge?”

Her tone is not reverential, but harsh and biting, her face twisted with disgust.

But then she turns away and sighs.

“But you remain a fire nation citizen, with all the privileges, rights, and responsibilities that follow—regardless of your past transgressions or current,” she gestures mildly at the sea that is churning behind him, as if yearning for his touch once more, “ _status_.”

Her eyebrows draw up, and her face softens.

“Welcome _home_ , Zhao.”

For a moment, she is just a young woman, and not the Fire Lord.

“You will always be welcome here.”

The air around her shimmers, and a warm winds wraps itself around him.

His inner fire, so long strangled and tempered by eternal fogs of fear and madness, settles and burns brightly once more.

It seeks out of his pores, and he can feel it licking at his hands.

Zhao takes a deep breath, a soft smile crosses the Fire Lord’s face, and Zhao allows himself the simple pleasure of being able to breathe once more.


	11. The Return of the Moon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ming-Hua's prison is not demolished in the aftermath of her escape.
> 
> Year Eighty-Four, Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Yue

Ming-Hua’s prison is not demolished in the aftermath of her escape.

It is repaired, in case the White Lotus ever has need of it once more.

The current avatar does not like it, and regards it with horror and disdain, but there will always be more avatars—and the contruction and demolition of such a prison is the effort of a lifetime.

It is the single driest place among the four nations.

It is the single place among the four nations in which La’s power is at its weakest—where there is not even a hint of water vapor for miles.

So the White Lotus leave the cell unlocked, and construct a sturdy metal bridge leading from its door.

They are not surprised when, during the next full moon, a woman appears in Ming-Hua’s cage, and steps out onto the bridge.

Her hair is a shocking white, flowing loose over her shoulders, and her blue eyes widen first with curiousity and then with growing horror as she slowly makes her way across the solid metal bridge.

Once her foot touches the metal of the lower-most level, the door of the cage slams closed, locks, and the once sturdy bridge crumples in on itself, and falls into the lava below.

She does not react to this but continues tracing her gaze over the prison that surrounds her, her face twisting into a mask of disgust.

A squad of five white lotus members await her, and fall to their knees as one.

“Princess Yue,” their leader proclaims, “you honor us with your—”

“This is horrible,” she interrupts him. “What is wrong with you people.”

They rise their heads, stunned, but she is not looking at them.

She turns on her heel, and with a great, circular movement of her arms that look a great deal like waterbending, cage breaks free from its tethers, and falls into lava below.

The squad’s mouths fall open as one, stunned into silence by the demonstration of a form of bending that none of them have ever seen before.

Yue, however, ignores them, slashes her arms through the air once more, this time flinging herself into the air.

“Follow her.”

They do—immediately.

They are the White Lotus, masters all.

But they cannot keep up with her.

She crashes first into the inner wall of the volcano, draws one of her hands in—and sticks to it, for just a second longer than she should.

Another wave of her arms, and she flung towards the second level.

She does not wait for them before continuing on, throwing herself first to the wall and then to the topmost level.

They are a half a second behind her, but she continues on—not even glancing back at them before she launches herself to the lip of the volcano.

They don’t hesitate to follow her, lining up on the lip beside her.

“Princess Yue—”

“Be _silent_ ,” she hisses out, circling her hands.

There is a sharp, metallic groan, and the White Lotus members fall silent.

She spreads her stance, pushes her hands before her in unison and the steel warps and ripples.

Her motions are undeniably water tribe, but what she is doing is undeniably—something else.

She inhales, and draws both of her hands sharply back towards her chest, and the entire structure _screams_.

Cables snap, platforms bend, and moorings tear themselves from the volcanic wall.

The White Lotus members finally realize what it is she is doing.

But they do not attempt to stop her.

(They have a deference to the spirits, and those that bear their will.)

This time, when she pushes her hands forward, the steel does not warp, or ripple—it tears itself fully from the volcanic wall, and is slowly dragged into the lava below.

Another sharp intake of breath, another gentle pulling motion, and lava rises to meet it.

Her nostrils flare, and she turns to the benders surrounding her.

“Do you know who it was you imprisoned here?” she asks, her face twisted with hatred, looking nothing like the kind, gentle princess of legend.

She drives her left hand down, now not even remotely resembling anything even approaching waterbending, and the last of the metal that made up the prison is driven from sight.

“Do you?” she grits out, her teeth ferally bared and now looking a great deal more like a wild spirit then a demure water tribe princess.

“It was a criminal, princess,” one of them finally manages to croak out.

Her nostrils flare, her white hair rises with her ire, and she stalks towards him. “Ming-Hua,” he adds nervously.

The moon’s light flares, and she shines with it, the moon’s light pouring from her skin, her hair, and her eyes.

She is blinding and the White Lotus members are forced to avert their eyes.

“Yes,” she agrees. “But do you know who she _was_?”

This time, she does not demand an answer, but plows on, stalking forward until she is chest to chest with the firebender who responded to her.

“She was my _child_ , you arrogant, insolent fools.”

Their eyes widen.

“And you _stole_ her from me, _hid_ her from my gaze, _locked_ her inside of a metal cage in a _volcano_ where not even _La_ himself could reach her for _thirteen_ _long years_.”

Her voice echoes harshly against nothing, coming in at them from all sides.

The five members of the White Lotus take an instinctive step back.

“ _Thirteen years_ , I was bereft of my most prized daughter.”

She takes a step forward, and the sound of her footstep is deafening.

“And you believed her to be a common criminal? You do not even begin to show the barest hints of remorse?”

The air around them glows into a bright, blinding light, and she is suddenly everywhere around them.

“You arrogant, insolent _fools_. I should kill you where you stand.”

Her voice booms in their ears, and they can hear nothing but her words.

“I should find every one of you, and draw you into La’s waters, so that _he_ may show you how _long_ thirteen years are,” she booms out, the force of her words driving them to their knees.

“But I will not.”

And just like that, they can see once more—they can hear once more.

The moon is no longer blinding in the sky (no longer blinding in the air all around them), the princess is gone from before them, and the princess’s voice has faded to only a whisper on the wind.

“No, I will instead bestow upon you the same punishment you bestowed upon _my_ child. Upon all of _our_ children.”

They hold their breaths as one.

“Mercy.”

It is a seductive, husky whisper in the wind, embodying all the sensuality that is inherent within the moon itself.

And, for a moment, they believe they have been spared.

But then the moon flashes bright in the sky, and screams tear their way out of their throats as thirteen years of desolation are driven into their minds.

As they are forced through thirteen years of desolation—being torn from one’s own child, one’s own spirit—and being completely powerless to _stop it_.

Their screams are echoed across the four nations as every member of the White Lotus falls to their knees as one.

Seven will die because they collapse in the wrong place, at the wrong time.

Twenty-three will be injured because the White Lotus’s only enemy is not the returned princess of the Northern Water Tribe.

The rest will be physically unharmed, surrounded by allies from the Water Tribes, the Air Nation, the Earth Kingdom and the United Republic of Nations.

No great villains will escape from their many prisons scattered across the four nations.

But none of them will wake for three days.

And none of them will ever be the same.


	12. As a Leaf on the Wind

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It is only after the White Lotus have awoken once more that she comes for him.
> 
> Year Eighty-Four, Winter

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Yue, Zaheer

It is only after the White Lotus have awoken once more that she comes for him.

She does not attempt to sneak in—does not attempt to enter the cell through some unknown, second route that no one is aware of—that only one so tied to the spirits as she would be capable of.

She comes in from the river, in full view of the sentries.

But they still are _not_ prepared.

How could they be, when they do not yet understand _what_ she is, and _how_ she is doing what it is that she is doing?

They are drawn up, into the air, with a gentle, flowing motion of her hands towards her chest.

Then, they are slammed into the earthen wall behind them with a flick of her wrist, and a forward shove.

They fall forward, unconscious, and she makes no motion to catch them before the crash into the ground.

She continues walking, having yet to stop, and begins to gently cirle her hands before her.

The doors groan in response, but do not move.

She does not pay this any heed, continuing to circle her hands while she continues to walk towards the doors.

She is three feet from them when something finally snaps, and they explode open before her.

Without breaking stide, she moves past them, not glancing back at the bleeding, broken bodies of the sentries.

She leaves the doors open behind her, and a gentle breeze stirs the dust within.

There are no guards inside, and she makes her way to the elevator.

It obediently opens before her, and closes behind her.

With a gesture, the outer doors of the elevator explode out, just before the elevator sinks her deep into the bowels of the earth.

She waits patiently as the elevator sinks deeper, and deeper.

And, just as the elevator comes to a stop, she pushes up, and the ceiling of elevator explodes above her.

When the door opens once more, it is to a blast of metal and earth.

But this prison is not built to contain waterbenders, and there is water in the air.

She is beyond them in an instant, long tendrils of water pulling her through the space between their Earth and metal.

They spin, but she is already upon them, her arms dangling at her side like the useless appendages her most beloved child (the child that is with her now, whispering in her ear) proved them to be.

The metalbending guard is picked up and tossed headfirst into the far metal wall--the only thing saving him from certain death his own mastery of the element

The Earthbender pulls up a wall, only for her to raise her arms, dismiss the water sprouting from her shoulders, and _pull_.

He is pulled from his feet and driven face-first into his own wall before he is even aware of what she's doing.

He crumples to the ground, and does not stir.

She turns to the large metal wall, and eyes the guard lying before it with disdain.

In his last moments, he has severed the chains used to draw the heavy, platinum doors up, and thrown them deep into the earth.

Quite an impressive effort.

But ultimately futile.

Yue is no Earthbender, and she had not been planning on lifting these walls.

With a twitch and roll of her shoulder, another water tendril pulls itself from the air, wraps itself around the crumpled metalbender, and tosses him over her shoulder.

As soon as it releases him, it is gone once more, and Yue spreads her stance.

Her entire body moves like a wave, and her arms push forward and pull back.

It is the motion of the tide, and the most fundamental movement in all of waterbending.

(It has been used to pull glaciers, and to flood continents.)

(It is the most powerful motion in all of waterbending.)

Yue is the ocean pulled by the moon—the tides that destroy mountains.

After several long minutes, the wall of platinum begins to flex—only barely visible at first, but then growing larger, and larger.

With every stroke of her hands, the ripple on the platinum grows larger, and larger until it strains at its moorings.

The metal begins to scream, the cavern begins to shake, and dust begins to fall upon her shoulders.

But Yue pays no mind, and continues moving.

It is only as the cavern is threatening to cave in upon itself, that the metal gives one last final scream, and the massive platinum wall tears itself from its moorings, and falls, deformed, at her feet.

There is the horrible scream of metal upon metal as its sister wall falls with it, and crashes upon its overturned base.

It throws up a massive cloud of dust, and, for a moment, Yue is blind.

But then the wind roars, the dust clears, and Zaheer steps over the rubble.

“Moon Spirit,” he says. “It is an honor to be in your presence.”

His deep voice rumbles through the cave with the all of the authority of a man who has changed the world.

His feet are light and soundless on the platinum walls as he picks his way over them, and makes his way to stand before her.

“To what do I owe this great honor?” he asks, his green eyes burning into her own.

His hair is long now, and it stirs with the wind that is still blowing lazily through the cavern.

“I’m just—doing a favor for an old friend,” she tells him.

For a moment, his face is contorted in confusion.

But then, over her shoulder he sees something that makes his eyes widen with understanding, and he turns back to her with an expression she cannot describe.

She takes a measured step back, and he turns his gaze back before him, his face still frozen in what she supposes could be called—rapture.

Upon the great gale he called to himself, a single leaf has come to the cavern.

It is a deep red, even though it is midwinter, and there are no more leaves left in the Earth Kingdom.

It billows softly towards them—softly towards Zaheer, who has yet to take his eyes from it.

The wind whispers its way around the cavern, and Yue can hear it.

 _Zaheer_ , it whispers in a voice that is both male and female, young and old.

(Indeterminable.)

(As ungraspable as the wind.)

 _My child_.

 _I have missed you_.

Another breeze, another tumble, and the leaf is before Zaheer.

It is spinning before him, but he makes no move to grasp it within his hand.

The wind whispers again, but this time the voice is different.

It is not the shapeless, ever-changing voice of the wind.

It is decidedly female, gravelly and rough.

 _Zaheer_ , it says.

 _Zaheer_.

Zaheer’s eyes widen in horror, and tears begin to fall from his eyes.

And, suddenly, the entire world is different.

Nothing has changed, but everything is different.

Yue can feel it though the earth beneath her.

She can see the dust that rises from Zaheer’s feet, stirred by the gentle breeze that is keeping the leaf floating before him.

She _knows_ that Zaheer’s feet once more rest upon the earth.

That Zaheer’s steps will no longer be light, and soundless.

That Zaheer no longer stands upon the earth simply to appease lesser beings.

Zaheer rises his hands to his mouth, and weeps.

Heavy tears fall from his eyes, his shoulders shake, and wind continues to whisper, _Zaheer_.

The gasps of his sobs catch the leaf and, it is blown away from him, spirally through the air to her.

She allows it fall softly upon her shoulder, and together, they watch the man who once held the world in his hands weep.

He finally stops, and raises red rimmed, green eyes to hers.

For a long moment, his eyes do not drift to the red leaf perched precariously on her shoulders.

“ _Thank you_ ,” he whispers, his once-smooth voice now gravelly and rough.

The red leaf on her shoulder tips, and falls forward.

Zaheer opens his hand, and holds it before himself.

“Control is an illusion,” Zaheer whispers.

The once gentle breeze of the cavern begins to intensify, and Yue takes a second step back.

“Freedom is surrender,” Zaheer continues.

The wind grows to a roar, and dust begins to circle around him.

“Be as a leaf on the wind,” Zaheer says as the wind’s roar grows to a scream, and she almost misses the word that follow, “and be free.”

The red leaf falls upon his palm, and Zaheer is torn into the air.

The cavern shakes, the wind screams, and Zaheer sucks in a breath as his eyes are thrown open, and light pours from them.

He is facing her but she is certain that he does not see her.

And even if he did, he would only see her for a moment before the winds engulf him, raging winds screaming.

In it, she can almost hear it.

 _I love you_ , she thinks she hears.

 _Return to me_.

They are the same things she said to Ming-Hua, when lightning was coursing through her veins, and Ming-Hua was forcing herself not to surrender.

The sphere of air draws in on itself, slowly dwindling until it is no larger than her fist, and the winds have died from a scream, to a roar, and finally, to a low whisper once more.

The winds dissipates, and the single red leaf spins softly, completely unharmed.

 _Thank you_ , the wind whispers to her.

She does not respond, but instead sucks the water out of the air around her, and allows Ming-Hua to carry her to the surface.

She allows herself to be comforted in the fact that they are no longer apart, and are with each other always.

 _Thank you_ , the wind whispers once more, this time with a low, male voice.

 _Thank you_.


	13. Calm Before the Storm

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After the attack on Yanlin Mountain, the world has been quiet.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Korra, Asami, Yue

After the attack on Yanlin Mountain, the world has been quiet.

But it has not been peaceful.

It is the calm before the storm, and everyone knows it.

The four nations are holding their breath.

They’re praying that the Moon Spirit has finished her rampage.

They’re praying that they are somehow mistaken—

That the moon spirit has not unleashed Zaheer upon the world once more.

But Zaheer’s cell was empty, and Zaheer’s body was nowhere to be found.

And the words she screamed— _Thirteen years, I was bereft of my most prized daughter_ —stick in their mind.

The world cannot fight the Red Lotus again.

Not when the Red Lotus has the moon herself on their side.

The world barely survived when it was simply a group of four anarchists.

But this—

This could bring the world to its knees.

Arguably, it already has.

So when the moon spirit appears in Korra’s bedroom—

The bedroom she shares with her _mortal_ , _nonbending_ wife—

She sees red.

She has thrown Yue out the window before she can blink, and Korra is in the air, falling after her before she can ever fully realize what she has done.

Flames lick at her hands, hungry for her rage, hungry for her passion (hungry for her murderous intent).

A twitch of her shoulders, a pull at her chi, and fire blooms under her feet, rocketing her down.

Windows explode to her right—unable to take the sudden heat that is billowing off Korra like a furnace.

Korra crashes into Yue’s chest with the full force of a fully realized avatar in the avatar state.

Yue’s face is illuminated by the light that is pouring from her eyes, and it’s—

Red.

Korra releases her as if she’s been burned.

“Well, well,” Yue says, as if one hundred and fifty pouinds of avatar are not driving her towards the ground. As if she is not staring into glowing _red_ eyes. “Hello there—”

 _No no no_.

“—Vaatu.”

Yue makes a vague gesture Korra doesn’t recognize, and their positions are reversed in an instant.

With a smile and a light _push_ , Korra is slammed into the concrete sidewalk below.

Yue lands lightly beside her, but Korra doesn’t react, chest heaving.

She holds a shaking hand before her face, blinks harshly and does her best to calm down.

But still her hand is painted red, and her heart is still beating into her throat, and Raava is nowhere to be found, and—

“Korra?”

She has Asami in her arms before Asami can blink.

“Asami, oh my God Asami.”

And then they’re in the air, and Korra’s not entirely sure how that’s happening, but they are, and Asami is still in her arms—

Asami wiggles and pulls her head back, meeting Korra’s eyes.

Her _red_ eyes, that are currently illuminating her pale skin with a ghastly tint, shining off of her purple eyeshadow—

“Baby, what happened?”

She’s remarkably calm for someone who’s being carried through the air by a frantic avatar in the avatar state with glowing red eyes who knows exactly what that means because she was there for—

Her hand is cool on Korra’s burning cheek, her thumb rubbing small, soothing circles.

But her face is still awash with _red_ light, and—

“I don’t know, I don’t know—”

And then tears are filling her eyes, and spilling over, and—

“Shh, it’s all right.”

Asami then proceeds to do some wizardry which ends with Korra’s face buried in her chest, and Korra’s hands wrapped tightly in her dress.

The next time she opens her eyes, Asami is lit with a bright, white light, and Raava is in the back of her mind, softly saying, _It’s all right, Korra_.

 _Everything’s going to be okay_.

So Korra allows herself to take a deep, gulping, sobbing breath, and buries her face in Asami’s chest once more.

When she looks down, there is no twisting tornado beneath her, Yue is nowhere to be found, and a crowd has gathered beneath her, looking up at her with awe and horror

And, just like that, the calm has been broken, and the storm has come.


	14. Entering the Void

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Let go your earthly tether.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Korra, Yue

_Let go your earthly tether._

_Enter the void._

_Empty, and become wind._

It is said that, upon releasing his final earthly tether, Guru Laghima unlocked the secret of weightlessness and became untethered from the Earth—living his final forty years without touching the ground.

Which is really all well and good, except for the fact Korra still very much _has_ her earthly tethers.

She likes to think she has several.

She wears one of them on the third finger of her left hand (because it’s important to Asami) and around her neck (because as much as she may be the Avatar, she is still Water Tribe).

And yet—

Korra steps out, and onto the solid earth of Laghima peak.

Even though it is apparently no longer necessary for her, she still finds it comforting to feel the earth beneath her feet.

She is not entirely surprised to see Yue waiting for her there.

But she is not entirely unsurprised, either.

(This is an air temple, after all—it is not so trivial to get here without an air ship.)

“What’s happening to me?”

Yue smiles, and, for a moment, it is hard to believe that it is she who has thrown the world into such disarray.

That it is she who threatens the White Lotus with her very existence.

“Nothingthat has not happened before,” Yue responds, even though it’s not an answer. “Nothing that will not happen again.”

She comes to stand beside Korra, facing out towards the cliff.

Korra turns towards her, but Yue neither continues nor turns to face her.

The sky, Korra notes, is dark tonight.

If she remembers her moon phases correctly, it should not rise for another five hours.

And Korra can’t help but wonder what would happen if she just—gave Yue a little shove.

Not a big one.

Just a little.

Just enough to push her from the ledge.

Whatever Yue may or may not be—she draws power from the moon.

And without it—well, even master waterbenders would have trouble surviving that fall.

Yue meets her eyes, and her smile is predatory.

It is vicious and it is _daring_ her to do it.

And then it’s gone.

This is the woman who has returned Zaheer to the world.

The woman who treatens the White Lotus (who threatens the avatar itself) with her very existence.

Korra takes a step back.

“I can fly,” she says instead.

Not, _Has Vaatu returned?_

Not, _What will this mean for the next avatar?_

No.

 _I can fly_.

Because she is a fool.

(Because she already knows the answer.)

(Because she already knows that she will not like it.)

“I know,” Yue says. “You always could.”

Korra looks down at her ring, and she raises her hand to her throat.

“That’s not—”

“That’s not how bending works?” Yue interrupts her.

 _Yes_.

“You’re right,” Yue agrees, and she smiles.

“But, then again—no human can bend two of the elements.”

Her eyes glint with something the Water Tribes do not like to associate with the Moon Spirit, but every other nation never fails to tie to its white light.

“Let alone _four_.”

She turns back to the horizon, and takes a seat on the ledge.

“The great spirits are fickle, jealous creatures,” she says, swinging her legs in the light breeze.

“They would never _willingly_ share.”

Her head rolls back, and her eyes catch Korra’s.

“In fact, they _don’t_.”

Her smile now is lazy, her hair swinging in the breeze.

“Although I cannot speak for the other great spirits,” she says, smirking like she really could, but is electing not to, “I can promise you that you have never bent water with my power.”

Korra averts her eyes, and stares at the point on the horizon she knows the moon will rise.

Because she is aware of spirits, and the moon spirit pulls hardest of them all.

But she bent water under the last lunar eclipse—just to prove she could do it.

And it wasn’t even difficult.

“Raava saw that man could fly.”

She turns back to Yue, and Yue kicks her feet against the cliff wall like a child.

“And thus, you, too, could fly.

Yue spreads her arms behind her, reclining back upon them.

“Simple as that.”

 _Simple as that_.

Korra turns to the horizon, and watches the point she knows the moon will rise from.

The Avatar.

The one person who can master all of the four elements.

The one person who can bring peace, and harmony to the world.

The one truth that she has been taught since birth.

And it has never felt more like a lie.

Korra looks down at Yue.

She lifts her hand, calls water from the moonless night, and driver her hand back down.

Korra’s water splits around Yue’s neck, and then it is Korra’s water no longer.

 _Simple as that_.


	15. The Price of Modernity

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Since its near-destruction during the one hundred years war, the Southern Water Tribe has grown to a metropolis to rival the Northern Water Tribe.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Katara, Yue

Since its near-destruction during the one hundred years war, the Southern Water Tribe has grown to a metropolis to rival the Northern Water Tribe.

It has buildings that do not melt.

It has waterbenders.

It has a city council, a tribe leader, and a city guard.

It is— _modern_.

And Katara tolerates this.

She does not speak out against buildings made of stone, wood and steel, built on permafrost.

She does not protest in city councils when they contemplate farming in the style of the Earth Kingdom.

She does not object when she enters a restaurant and they carry not a single dish containing sea prunes, blubber, or whale meat.

She _tolerates_ this.

But she does not _like_ it.

So, even though she will turn one hundred this year—and even though she spends three hours every day bending away her own death—every month, she spends a week in the arctic tundra.

She spends a week, allowing herself to remember what once was.

The Southern Water Tribe that nobody but she seems to recall with fondness.

The Southern Water Tribe with no permanent buildings—no waterbenders.

The Southern Water Tribe that was _dangerous_.

Where you had to _fight_ to _survive._

She does not bend her sled with waterbending any more, allowing her eldest daughter to convince her to use polar bear dogs.

She brings polar furs, now, needing her own waterbending to keep her alive, and no longer able to waste it keeping herself warm.

But she does not relent when Kya asks her to bring guards, or healers.

She does not relent when Kya says that she wishes to come with her.

Because only Aang—who knew the old Southern Water Tribe, and who loved it just as she did—has ever come with her on these trips, and with him gone, she does not with to take anyone else.

So she is alone, in the middle of the arctic tundra, when she sees Yue, once more.

"Hello, Katara."

She looks exactly as she did eighty-four years ago, her features as gentle and as beautiful as ever.

"Hello, Yue."

She looks nothing like the raging spirit the White Lotus described her as, or the calculating woman Korra described her to be.

She is simply—Yue.

Exactly as Katara remembers her.

But she is also the Moon spirit, Katara knows, and she knows this is not a social visit.

She is not here to reminisce about Sokka, and how he was a wonderful, lovable fool.

She is not here to reminsice about Aang, back when he was still weak, and in need of protecting.

No, the moon is full above her, and she knows exactly what Yue is here for.

She strips off her coat, untethers her dogs, and sends them back in the general direction of the tribe that was once hers, but is no longer.

There is a storm mounting on the horizon, and she loves those dogs very much.

They are good dogs, so they require persuading.

But they are obedient dogs, and they listen to her words.

She tosses her coat back onto her sled, and takes a seat next to Yue.

Yue turns to her, and her smile is soft.

Her skin is more radiant that it should be, reflecting the light of the moon as if it is pouring from within her.

Kya is going to weep, she knows.

Kya is going to rage, and she is going to take it out on everything she can get her hands on.

But Katara can’t help but turn to Yue, and smile back.

"Does this mean I am one of your children?" she asks.

Because she has been wondering.

After hearing of Ming-Hua, and P’li, and Ghazan.

She couldn’t help but wonder how she measured up.

(Old habits dies hard, she supposes, and Katara will always have her pride.)

Yue places a small, tan hand on her forearm.

"Of course." The moon shines brightly in the sky, and Katara's entire body is warm. "Was there ever any doubt?"

Yue stands from the snow drift, and holds out her hand to Katara.

For a long moment, Katara allows herself to look at it.

Lightly tanned skin, shining with the light of the moon.

They are beautiful, and she is momentarily struck witht the thought that they are the most beautiful hands she has ever seen.

But then she remembers herself, and slides her hand into Yue’s.

Yue pulls lightly on her hand, and she is upon her feet.

She can hear the arctic winds begin to roar, and she knows that the blizzard has come.

It is a bad day to be on the arctic tundra.

An easy day to leave, and never return.

But the winds still obligingly blow around them.

Understanding that what they have begun they have not yet finished.

Yue slips her hand from Katara's and instead takes Katara's face in her hands.

The moonlight is growing brighter, reflecting harshly against Yue's hair.

"Am I going to see him again?"

She can't help but ask--can't help but wonder.

Can't help but worry.

"Of course."

Yue's eyes begin to shine, and her blue eyes are enveloped in white light.

"I would never deny you that."

And then the blizzard is upon them, its winds harsh, and cold, and biting.

"You're so beautiful," Yue whispers, her smile all but lost in the radiance of her skin. "I love you."

Then she rises on her toes, and presses her lips to Katara's forehead.

The wind roars, the clouds roll in, and the entire world goes dark.

But Katara can still feel the moon—it is now within her, bright and powerful and warm.

It coarses throuhg her veins, and Katara feels greater, and more powerful than she ever has in her life.

It is undeniable, and unstoppable, so Katara rises her hands, and draws the storm in.

It roars and it rages, icy cold and freezingly hot.

And then it’s over.


	16. Letters to the Avatar

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Korra and Kuvira speak—on a regular basis.
> 
> Year Seventy-Six, Spring

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Korra, Kuvira

Korra and Kuvira speak—on a regular basis.

They might even be—friends.

(If you could call it that.)

Even though one of them is imprisoned deep in the bowels in Republic City, and the other is the avatar.

It starts around Kuvira’s third year in incarceration.

She sends Korra a letter.

Three lines long.

 _Korra_ , it reads, _I’m bored_.

 _Sincerely, Kuvira_.

Korra laughs so hard she almost falls off her chair.

So she responds.

 _I’m sorry, Kuvira_.

_Is there anything I can do to help?_

The response comes quickly.

_I’m thinking of taking up painting._

_I’ve never painted before._

_Can you get me painting supplies?_

So Korra arranges for non-metallic paints to be made and shipped into her cell.

President Lee (and yes, he has heard all of the Lee jokes before) isn’t particularly happy about it, but he likes her more than Raiko did, so he obliges her.

To say Kuvira is bad at painting would be an understatement.

But she seems fairly happy with it, and Korra and Kuvira continue to exchange letters.

Letters that say things like—

_Korra, I was going for a cat but I think it looks like a rabbit._

_What do you think?_

To which Korra says things like—

_I think it looks more like an Air Bison._

_But at least it’s not brown._

(Because Kuvira had a lot of trouble mixing colors at the beginning, and everything turned out brown.)

When Korra and Asami marry five years into Kuvira’s imprisonment, Kuvira is approaching actual proficency, and she sends them a pencil drawing of the Future Industries logo that is actually rather breathtaking.

By that time, it’s been five years, and Asami has almost forgiven Kuvira.

So they hang it in their bedroom, and Asami forgives Kuvira a little bit more.

It isn’t until later that Korra realizes the significance of the medium.

Or that Kuvira’s letters are always written in pencil, and not in pen.

Graphite.

It is easy to forget, sometimes, how many common, household objects contain earth.

Even holding Kuvira’s letters in her own hands, it never occurrs to her.

Not until she receives a letter that feels—wrong—sometime around the seventh year of Kuvira’s incarceration.

There are words on the page, but there is something—else—within it.

Almost as if there is— _earth_ —within the paper.

And then it hits her like a freight train—and she is temporarily paralyzed by fear.

Kuvira has _earth_.

Kuvira, who, after Toph, is possibly the greatest earthbender in the world, has _earth_.

But then she remembers that Kuvira has been writing her letters for four years, pulls the earth from within the paper, and reads the words Kuvira has hidden within it.

 _Do you trust me?_ the hidden words read.

Korra doesn’t respond for three days.

Asami worries, but Korra can’t find the heart to tell her that the woman who killed her father has _earth_ (and all that that entails), so Korra remains silent.

On the fourth day, Korra writes her usual response.

And then she pushes _Yes_ deep into the paper, and prays she isn’t making the biggest mistake of her life.

She stays in Republic city for the next three months and never tells anyone why.

But Kuvira doesn’t attempt to escape.

She sits in her platinum cage, writes her letters that now occasionally have private, hidden messages in the paper, and paints.

Three years later, when Yue returns to the land of the living, and systematically destroys every White Lotus prison in existence, and executes the prisoners housed there, but never comes for Kuvira, Korra realizes that her trust in Kuvira has saved Kuvira’s life, and it makes her feel a little bit better about _Simple as that_.

Not a lot.

But a little.


	17. The Unbendable

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Do you trust me, Korra?
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Korra, Kuvira

_Do you trust me, Korra?_

This time, it’s written on the page, in plain view for her guards to see.

(Because Korra knows that they read it.)

(She hates it, but she can’t stop them.)

 _Sincerely, Kuvira_.

Within the page she has written—

_If you do, come to my cell._

_I have something I need to show you._

Korra goes immediately.

She reschedules a meeting with president whoever-it-is-now, cancels a date with her wife, and is before Kuvira’s cell in under an hour.

Because the answer is yes.

It has been since she realized graphite is earth, and told no one.

(It has been since she let Kuvira be, and she stayed.)

“Korra.”

The smile Kuvira gives her is not the one she expects, and Korra doesn’t quite know what to do with it.

“Hey,” she responds, awkwardly raising a hand. “What’s up?”

Kuvira inhales a deep breath, and pushes herself to her feet.

“I wanted to show you something.”

And it sounds like she wants to say an awful lot more than that, but she doesn’t.

“Cool,” Korra squeaks out before shaking her head, and repeating, in a much more becoming voice, “ _Cool_.”

Kuvira snorts briefly, before sliding her legs apart in what is undeniably an earthbending stance, and Korra takes an instinctive step back.

Kuvira’s cell is made of pure platinum, and she is confined in a circular set of solid platinum bars, but she is still _Kuvira_.

(Kuvira, who metal bent a mecha the size of the Future Industries tower by its skeleton without breaking a sweat.)

Kuvira just smiles a sad smile, rolls her shoulders, and _moves_.

The platinum bars of her cell move with her.

When she stops, her cell is exactly as it had been.

Except that every bar in her cell used to be two bars to the left.

Korra’s legs buckle under her, and her knees crash into the platinum beneath her.

“If Yue was right,” Kuvira tells her, “this all the demonstration you need to be able to bend platinum.”

She softens her stance, and Korra tries not to notice how the platinum ripples under her feet.

“No one will ever be able to imprison you again.”

When Korra rises her eyes to Kuvira’s, her expression is unexpectedly soft.

And Korra realizes that this is a favor.

That Kuvira didn’t have to do this—that Kuvira is no longer surrounded by ten tons of prison but by ten tons of _weapon_ —and she chose to show Korra how to bend platinum before she left.

Kuvira slips down, and takes a seat on the hard platinum—the platinum that gives beneath her, because it is no longer unbendable.

“You’re going to escape, aren’t you?”

Kuvira smiles sadly at her and closes her eyes.

“Toph was an earthbender,” she says, not answering Korra’s question. “She was able bend metal because she could feel the earth in it, and the earth obeyed her call.”

She rolls her head to the side, and she bows her head.

“An impressive feat. She is my master’s master, and for that she will always hold my respect.”

Kuvira opens her eyes, and they are silver, and reflect the light of the torches.

“But, in the end,” she says, her metallic, silver eyes focused entirely upon Korra, “she was still _just_ an earthbender.”

Kuvira places her hands solidly upon the platinum beneath her, and this time the platinum is hard beneath her palms, and the sound rings clear off the walls of the cell.

“But I am of the metal clan,” she says, scooping her hands into the platinum as if they are water, “and I bend metal because it is _metal_.”

With a sharp motion the platinum is thrown into the air before her, and it arches gracefully between her hands.

“And it therefore belongs to _me_.”

The platinum freezes in place before her, frozen in a liquid arch.

“I am a metalbender,” she declares. “I am _not_ an earthbender.”

Korra can feel Kuvira’s words in her bones, and she knows them to be true.

The _universe_ knows them to be true.

And Korra can feel the universe adjust, to fit them.

“It matters not that all of the earth has been purified from platinum because I do not bend _earth_.”

Kuvira twists her hands, and the platinum drains back into her palms.

“I bend _metal_.”

She clamps her hands together, and a resounding clap echoes throughout the chamber.

“The world is changing, Korra.” She overturns her hands, revealing a small sphere of platinum. “The world is changing, and I will be a part of it.”

The sphere rises itself into the air.

“I _must_ be a part of it.”

She twists her palm, and drives the platinum sphere at Korra with what is clearly _not_ simple arm strength.

Korra twists her arm up, and the sphere slams into her palm, the sound echoing across the chamber.

She looks down at it, and frowns.

She looks down at it, and hates that it exists.

She looks down at it, and hates that it is making her make this decision.

Kuvira waits patiently, silently, like the earthbender she once was.

(The earthbender she is no longer.)

“Promise me you won’t hurt anyone,” Korra finally says to the smooth platinum before her.

As if it is who she needs to trust.

As if _it_ has the power to destroy the world.

“Promise me you won’t make me come after you.”

She curls her fingers around the sphere, and presses her forehead to her knuckles.

“I give you my word, Korra.”

 _I give you my word_.

_Do you trust me, Korra?_

That night, Korra does not return home, and bends platinum for the first time atop her predecessor’s arrow.

The next morning, Kuvira is gone, and her wife has accidentally torn her favorite Satomobile in two.

The world goes mad.


	18. Living Metal

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> They don't realize who she is at first
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Kuvira

They don’t realize who she is at first.

She is wrapped completely in platinum—a beast of living metal.

And, for a moment, they believe her to be a spirit, come to life.

The spirit of platinum.

(They are not wrong.)

(They just aren’t entirely right.)

So they wait to attack.

Spirits are not things to be trifled with.

(Yue has proved that.)

But then they remember who, exactly was hidden behind these platinum gates, and what, exactly, she is.

(The greatest metalbender of her generation.)

And if there is anyone who could bend platinum—it is her.

It is Kuvira, of the metal clan.

And they rise up to attack her.

They lift their arms, extend their blades, and shoot their wires.

Kuvira does not bother to fight back.

She does not even bother to stop.

Their wires wrap around her, only to be consumed by her platinum skin.

Their blades strike her, only to be melted away.

They lift earthen walls, bind her ankles, and toss boulders upon her.

But she is an unstoppable force, and earth shatters around her feet, walls break before her, and boulders do not even slow her.

And, before they know it, she has stepped through the walls of the elevator, and it is rocketing up, through the earth.

The elevator is out of their reach in half a second, and they are forced to radio in their failure.

 _It’s Kuvira_ , they say.

And even though everyone understands the stakes, they continue, _Stop her at all costs._

 _Take her dead or alive_.

There is a tense silence.

A silence they should be filling with—

 _She has wrapped herself in platinum_ —

 _Metalbending is worse than useless and Earthbending is close_ —

And

 _Take utmost precaution_.

But they do not.

They remain silent, hold their breath.

And pray that they are wrong.

Because it has occurred to them that the building above them is made of steel, and not of stone and wood.

That after two hundred feet, the elevator is plunged into metal—and that in Republic City—the greatest and most modern city in the world—it runs for miles, until there is no Republic City left.

_The elevator’s empty, captain._

And, just like that, they have failed.

_Red alert._

Kuvira is free.

_Kuvira has escaped._

_Repeat._

_Kuvira has escaped._

_Red alert_.

The greatest task they have ever been faced with.

Their greatest crisis.

And they have failed.

_Take utmost precaution._

_Assume armed and dangerous._

_Repeat._

_Kuvira has escaped_.

_Red alert._


	19. Figures in the Dark

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> His room is dark when he awakens
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Kuvira, Bataar

His room is dark when he awakens.

In it, the shadows take on familiar shapes.

Haunting him with what he once had, and has no longer.

Before him he sees the shadowed figure of—

“Baatar.”

The one person he never thought he would see again.

“ _Kuvira_.”

He whispers it, because he honestly doesn’t know if he believes it.

The room is dark, after all, and—

Well, the dark and the wind plays tricks on him, sometimes.

But then her hand is unnaturally cool upon his cheek, and he is reminded of the legend of the cold ones.

Those whose skin is cold as ice, and who come in the night to old lovers, and seduce them into the bottoms of wells, and cold, dark rivers.

He feels fear.

Because that means either Kuvira is dead or escaped.

And he is not sure which frightens him more.

(He is not sure which he _wishes_ to be true.)

Her hand on his cheek is soft, and gentle, and so unlike how it was in the final days of the war.

(Just before she turned her spirit cannon upon him, after he pledged his life to her.)

“Why?”

It comes out before he can stop it.

He was supposed to have come to terms with this ten years ago.

He is thirty-seven years old, and he should not still be thinking about this.

And yet—

“You know why,” she says, her voice soft.

Her hand threads into the hair he has allowed to regrow on the sides of his head, and scratches lightly at his scalp.

“I didn’t love you because you were stupid, after all.”

Baatar turns his face into his pillow and clenches his eyes shut.

Cold ones are not so articulate.

They are said to be incapable of speech.

(Only capable of moaning out their lover’s name.)

Kuvira has escaped.

Kuvira has escaped, and the first thing she did was come for _him_.

“ _Kuvira_.”

He is a fool.

He did not go to see her, he did not write letters to her for ten years for exactly this reason.

Because just by existing—Kuvira made him feel like he was the only man in the world.

If he had gone to see her—just once—he would have tried to break her out.

He knows this.

He wonders if she knows it too.

He wonders if that was why she contacted Korra (because of course he knows about that) and _not_ him.

(He knows its wishful thinking, but he thinks wistfully regardless.)

“I am so happy I failed, Bataar,” she says to him, seating herself upon his bed, and curling her hand deeper into his hair. “Because Republic City wouldn’t have been worth it without you.”

And then she turns to him, fully, and she drops her head to meet his eyes.

“Bataar, I need you.”

Her eyes glint in the darkness, and he sees that they are an unnatural silver.

It is horrible and terrifying, and Bataar is finding that he does not care.

“The world is changing and demanding that _I_ be a part of it, but—”

She drops her head further, sliding down on the bed and pressing her forehead to his.

“But I can’t do it without you.”

Her skin is still cold against his.

As unnatural as her eyes, and he can feel the wrongness and the differentness radiating from her skin.

“I can promise you that I will not allow the world to seperate us again.”

Her hair falls, and tickles at his neck.

“So tell me that you’ll be with me.”

Her silver eyes hold his, and her lips are a breath away from his own, her breath brushing against his lips with her every word.

“Tell me that you still love me.”

And then he has his arms around her waist, and pressed his lips against hers.

They are cold, and her skin is not as soft as it once was but he doesn’t care.

(He is a fool.)

(He acknowledges this, and hopes that perhaps that will make it better.)

“Of course,” he whispers.

And then he is on his back, and she is on top of him, hard edges and sharp bones where she used to be soft muscled curves.

Her cold, hard lips are hungry on his own, and _this_ is what he’s been missing.

“Was there ever any doubt?”

She chokes a laugh against his lips before breaking away and pressing a cold forehead against his neck.

“No,” she manages, and he can feel her tears against his neck.

“I wasn’t worried at all.”

It took him six months to regain the trust of his mother.

Three years to regain the trust of his father.

Seven to regain the love of his siblings.

They will never forgive him for this.

(He doesn’t care.)


	20. Metal and Smoke

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The mattress is cold beside him when he wakes.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Kuvira, Bataar

The mattress is cold beside him when he wakes.

He panics, because if this was just a dream—if this was just a dream again, then—

But then his fingers find a cool back, and he opens his eyes.

Kuvira is sitting up beside him, one hand holding his comforter over her bare breasts, and the other extended before her with all five fingers extended.

She sees that he is awake and smiles at him.

“Good morning, Bataar.”

It is wonderful to have a name again, and he allows himself to smile.

Her hand is extended towards the door behind him , and he does not want to turn around to see who it is.

But he knows that he cannot stick his head into the earth forever, and finally rolls over to see—a closed door.

He turns back to the windows, and he sees that they are sealed with a silvery metal that was not there the day before.

“It’s platinum,” she informs him.

He’s not surprised.

He knew the circumstances of her imprisonment.

(And the color of his new window shades matches the color of her new eyes.)

“Ready to face the music?”

He isn’t, but it likely doesn’t matter.

She must see this in his expression.

“Take your time. Nobody will be able to get in unless I explicitly allow it.”

She drops the comforter covering her modesty, and places her hand softly on his cheek.

It is then that he notices that the room is deafeningly silent.

With a great effort, he manages to pull himself away and drag himself to his closet.

He no longer has any of the uniforms of the Earth Empire, but he has several that are close.

He picks them carefully, and smooths out wrinkles he knows for a fact aren’t there.

He combs his hair back, wishes he had a razor, and slides his glasses onto his face.

He turns to Kuvira, who has yet to move, and he sees that her expression is unexpectedly soft.

It is not the victorious, vicious expression he was expecting.

“Ready?”

He glances at the still incredibly silent door, before nodding hesitantly.

She smiles and slides across the bed, before standing and making her way to him.

She is glorious in her nakedness, and he can’t help but admire it.

And then her muscles flex under her skin, and she spins.

Sound barrels back into the room with a vengeance, and the platinum rips itself from his windows and crashes into her.

It does not create a form-fitting second skin—nor does it make itself into the guard uniform she once wore with such pride.

It is exactly a silver copy of what she wore when she took over the Earth Kingdom, and attacked Republic City.

The smirk she sends to him is as vicious as he remembers it as guard upon guard pile into his room.

She turns from him, and he automatically takes a step back, and folds his hands behind his back.

Even after ten years, it is automatic.

She raises her hands and silver threads tie her hair back into place.

But then platinum peels off of her left hand, turns from the guards that are glaring at her like she is Vaatu himself, and offers it back to him.

Nobody dares attack, and he steps forward, and places his hand in hers.

“ _Kuvira_.”

“Suyin.”

Kuvira turns back to the rather impressive number of guards before them, and smiles at Suyin in way that is most assuredly _not_ benign.

He tightens his hand in Kuvira’s, and watches what he was worked for for the past ten years go up in smoke.


	21. Hiding in Plain Sight

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> When Mai hears that Ty Lee has joined the Kyoshi warriors, she doesn't believe it.
> 
> Year Two, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Mai, Ty Lee

When Mai hears that Ty Lee has joined the Kyoshi warriors, she doesn’t believe it.

It isn’t until Ty Lee is standing before her in full Kyoshi warrior regalia that she finally manages to belive it is anything other than a bad joke.

(Although it might be a bad joke all the same.)

When she sees Ty Lee’s grey eyes, mostly hidden by a mess of red eyeshadow and white facepaint, Mai can no longer find the situation even remotely humorous

 _This_ is what Ty Lee has decided to do with herself after Azula?

Be part of a matched set once more?

(When she could have been so much more.)

(When they had been so much more.)

She has come to protect Zuko from assassins.

From her brethren, those who she trained, slept and killed with.

(The irony.)

(Mai knows for a fact that Ty Lee has been fantasizing about watching him choke on his own breath since they were eight years old.)

When they see each other again, they do not speak.

They are in the company of too many _others_.

Those that do not and will never understand the history that they share.

(That would not understand the words that are pushing at their lips, begging to be spoken, to be screamed, and snarled out.)

Instead they nod, and smile, as if they are old friends.

(Which they are, of course, but—)

It makes Zuko smile to himself as if he has done something wonderful, and she just pets his arm and doesn’t tell him Ty Lee hates him so much she would gladly watch him burn on his own fire.

(That she came back just for his Agni Kai, and after it, her smirk was _victorious_.)

(Just like Azula’s.)

(Just like hers _almost_ was.)

Ty Lee comes to find her that night.

She comes in through the window, with all the stealth of the assassin she was once trained to become.

(The assassin that could still kill Zuko if she hadn’t decided somewhere along the line that the world was better with him in it.)

“Mai.”

Zuko is off doing—something.

Mai doesn’t know.

She _almost_ doesn’t care.

“Ty Lee.”

Ty Lee’s face is stwisted into undisguised disdain.

Mai’s isn’t, but she feels it all the same.

Ty Lee looks at the finery that surround Mai, and Mai looks at the pitiful face paint that marks her as one of the Kyoshi warriors.

It’s Mai who speaks first.

“ _The Kyoshi warriors_?”

Ty Lee’s eyes snap to hers, and she can’t help but snort.

“What were you _thinking_?”

(Mai still remembers the _This is the best the Earth Kingdom has to offer?_ that came with a vapid smile and a giggle back before everything got so complicated.)

Ty Lee moves forward with a sneer that nobody but she and Azula would recognize on her face.

“Me?” she asks, her voice soft, and so much like Azula’s it makes Mai’s heart clench.

“What about _you_ , Mai?”

She is in Mai’s face as she has not been since they were in Earth Kingdom, and the rock that broke three of Azula’s ribs came from the side _Mai_ was supposed to be protecting.

“Playing at being _Zuzu’s_ little plaything?”

She sneers it out like Azula did, and is the only one who ever has.

In this light, from this distance, the Kyoshi Warrior facepaint is ghastly and horrible.

Exactly as it should be.

Because for the first time in her life, Ty Lee looks exactly like what she is.

(A monster.)

At the Royal Academy for Girls, there was a reason Azula chose them out of all of the little noble girls who would weep blood to be able to kneel at her feet.

They are kindred spirits, after all.

(Monsters all.)

Mai opens her mouth to tell Ty Lee that she is to be _Fire Lady_ , the most influential woman in the fire nation—but then Ty Lee’s lips are on hers, and her words die in her throat.

Ty Lee’s lipstick is slimy, bitter and awful—the Kyoshi warriors clearly didn’t design it with kissing in mind—but Mai still kisses her back.

She fists her hands in the back of Ty Lee’s robes and presses their bodies flush together.

It is as wrong as everything they have ever done.

More so, perhaps—now that she is properly with Zuko, and there is no Azula to drive them to each other.

It is Ty Lee who pulls back first.

Her lipstick is smeared in the white face paint around her mouth, and Mai can feel it on her own lips.

“Have fun as Zuzu’s little pet.”

She presses one last rough, slimy kiss against Mai’s lips, and then she is gone, curtains left to flap in the wind.

(Having apparently said her fill.)

Mai stares at the flapping curtains for a long moment, waiting for her heartbeat to slow, before sighing heavily and turning away.

She doesn’t know when Zuko will return, but if she still looks like this even he will understand what has happened.

She walks to the bathroom, and stares at her own reflection.

Ty Lee kissed her for thirty seconds at most, and Mai looks utterly debauched.

Her robes are completely out of place, lipstick is smeared all over her mouth, and her normally impeccable hair is thrown into wild disarray.

(But this does not surprise her.)

(She knew it would be this way.)

She loves Zuko.

She does.

She carefully unties her hair, and allows it to fall, long and flowing, down her back.

He makes her content.

For the first time in her life, she feels safe.

She undoes the ties on her robe, and allows it to fall heavily to the floor, leaving her body bare against the chill of the night that has seeped through the window Ty Lee has left open.

He is a good man.

He is a good lover.

He is even a good Fire Lord.

Mai moves to the sink, picks up a small hand-towel, and wets it.

She runs her tongue carefully over her lips, tasting the bitter, harsh taste of Ty Lee’s lipstick.

She spits into the sink in disgust.

It will be enough.

It _has_ to be enough.

She meets her own gold eyes in the mirror, before rising the hand towel to her lips, and carefully washing all evidence of Ty Lee from her face.

She _needs it_ to be enough.

She then turns to the bath, slips in, and washes the rest of the evidence of Ty Lee from everywhere else.

They will not see each other again for three years, when Ty Lee comes with Azula to challenge Zuko for his crown.

It will take another eleven years for them too see each other a third time, when Ty Lee and Azula return to the palace after Fire Lord Yue has pardoned them for their crimes.

They will not kiss again until two years after that, when she is sick and Ty Lee is _there_ and Zuko is _not_.

(It will be soft and gentle and sweet, everything this kiss was not, and will not taste of bitter, slimy lipstick that is better left to little girls who like to pretend they are warriors.)


	22. Dealing with the Devil

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Yue's first order as Fire Lord is the pardon of Azula
> 
> Year Sixteen, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Male on female physical assault (choking).
> 
> Characters: Azula, Zuko

Yue’s first order as Fire Lord is the pardon of Azula.

Her second is the pardon of Ty Lee.

(Or rather, Azula’s _consort_ , Ty lee.)

(It is a relevant and meaningful distinction that no one fails to notice.)

Her third order as the Fire Lord is the banishment of the Avatar himself.

( _For crimes against this country, and my people, I hereby_ banish _you from my lands, Avatar._ )

( _Should you ever return, it will not only be the right but the duty of every man, woman and child of the Fire Nation to_ kill you _on sight_.)

“Why’d you do it?”

She is waiting for him in his chambers after Yue’s coronation.

( _His_ chambers.)

(It almost makes him weep.)

It doesn’t surprise him.

He knew she’d be there.

(She’s always loved to gloat.)

“Do you really hate me _this_ much?”

He sounds like he’s whining, and he knows it.

But—his daughter and his country have been stripped from him.

Stripped from him by a sister who has already had her revenge—who has already disgraced him in front of his people.

(Who has spit on everything he has ever worked for.)

(Who has always had everything he has ever wanted.)

She opens her mouth to speak, and he is prepared for her to berate him.

For a _Please, Zuzu, not everything is about you_.

But she just flicks non-existent dirt from beneath her short, manicured fingernails, and says, “Ty Lee got tired of living in exile.”

It knocks his breath as surely from him as if she had struck him in the gut.

“She wanted to sleep in a bed again.”

She raises her gaze from her fingernails, and her smirk is lazy.

“Who am I to deny her?”

A sound echoes through the room, and it takes him a long moment to realize it his own strangled roar of rage.

His fire comes to his hands, unbidden, and he slashes it wildly at her.

(It is not proper firebending, but at that moment, he doesn’t care.)

Azula does not even bother to dodge—allowing the flames to wash across her and catch the curtains behind her on fire.

Her laugh is light, high, and genuinely mirthful.

“Come now, Zuzu. Don’t be a child.”

He has his hands around her neck before he is even aware of what’s happening.

Tears are streaming down his face, and his breath is shaky as he pushes all of his strength into wringing the life from her throat.

“I’m going to fucking kill you.”

He doesn’t hear Mai come in.

His breath is too heavy in his own ears, his thoughts too loud in his own head.

“You fucking monster, I’m going to kill you.”

But Azula simply gives him a cold look of disdain and dismissal.

As if his hands aren’t crushing the life out of her, and she won’t bare the bruises of his fingers around her throat for the next three weeks.

Her body wracks as her body tries to draw breath, but her expression doesn’t break.

Her hands do not rise to scrabble against his.

She simply looks coldly upon him until her eyes flutter closed, and her entire body goes limp.

A stiletto whistles past his face, only barely not slicing his eye open, and shatters through the window to his right.

He drops Azula, his heart beating in his throat and his hands shaking.

“Agni.”

She drops like a sack of bricks.

A _small_ sack of bricks.

A ragged wheeze wracks through her, and her small body shakes as she feebly attempts to draw breath into her lungs.

She rises a hand weakly to her throat, and her eyes flutter open to meet his.

“Agni, what have I done?”

Azula’s eyes close again, and her hand collapses back on her chest.

Her body doesn’t shake again with breath.

“Get out.”

 _Mai_.

He had forgotten she was there.

He turns to her—

“ _GET OUT!”_

She screams it out as tears pour down her cheeks, with her face twisted with a rage he has never seen it before, and he takes a stumbling step back.

His legs trip over what can only be Azula’s crumpled form, and he falls through the doors of the balcony.

A stiletto slices deep into the side of his neck, and he takes another stumbling step back.

His back hits the stone railing, and he rises a hand hesitantly to his bleeding neck, staring at Mai (at the body at Mai’s feet) with muted horror.

But Mai’s hand is already filled with another stiletto, and her face is still twisted with rage and hate.

“Never enter my sight again.”

And just like that, he has lost his wife.

Just like that, he has lost _everything_.

Azula’s body twitches as her lungs finally accepting a loud, wracking breath.

And still, Azula lives.

He regrets not snapping her neck when he had the chance.


	23. Of White Flames and Black Coals

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For seventeen years, Azula does not leave Mai's side.
> 
> Year Sixty-Eight, Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Azula, Mai

For seventeen years, Azula does not leave Mai’s side.

When she is too tired to sleep, Azula whispers soft nothings into her grey hair, and holds her close.

When she wakes in the morning and is foggy with sleep, Azula smiles and presses kisses to her wizened face.

When her joints ache, Azula warms them.

When she is too tired to sit up, Azula helps her.

When she finally relents, and allows the servants to strip her blades from her robes, Azula carefully arranges them on the bedside table so that she can still reach them from the bed she has become bound to.

When she can’t sleep without opium tea, Azula carefully boils it herself with soft, orange flames, and refuses to allow any servants to touch it.

When she is told by royal physicians that it is not her back but her lungs that will kill her, Azula roars blue flames, and almost catches their bedspread on fire.

When her lungs refuse to draw breath, Azula presses warm hands to her chest, and her lungs clear.

When she weeps because she can’t stand anymore, Azula holds her close, and runs soft, warm fingers down her back.

When she slices her hand open on her own blades because she can’t keep her hands from shaking, Azula’s fingers trace the wound until it closes of its own volition.

When she screams because she is weak and dying, Azula blows blue fire into her hands, and places them on her chest so that she can keep screaming.

When she coughs blood onto the pillow she cannot lift her head from, Azula exchanges their pillows, and changes the pillowcase herself.

When she decides that she wants to watch the sun set, Azula blows three internal walls to pieces, and drags their bed to the courtyard like she isn’t ninety-three years old.

When the scales finally tip, and she is asleep more than she is awake, Azula lies by her side, slowly loses the muscle tone and perfect body she once so coveted.

When she begins to forget, Azula holds her hands so that she doesn’t break them beating them against Azula’s chest.

When the deepest breaths Mai can take become shaking gasps, the lamps in their rooms burn orange for the first time in decades, and Azula stops firebending altogether.

When she calls Azula a monster, and curses her name, Azula shakes silently and doesn’t kiss her, but refuses to leave.

When she can no longer hear the birds singing outside of the window, Azula hires three conductors to make symphonies entirely of notes she can still hear.

When she can no longer lift a cup to her mouth, Azula does not allow servants to serve her, and calls Katara.

When the greatest healer of the four nations cannot heal her, and suggests preparing to let her go, Azula whispers in Mai’s ear— _Don’t listen to her, she’s lying_ —and her voice shakes so badly that Mai wonders when Azula forgot how to lie.

When she forgets Azula altogether, Azula reintroduces herself every time she asks as _Azula_ , and not as _Princess Azula_ , and the part of Mai that understands that this is _not quite right_ never disappears.

When she has her first lucid day in three years, and she remember Azula and Ty Lee and Yue, Azula screams at her with tears pouring down her cheeks, and lights their rooms on fire with shaky, orange fire.

When she feels sleep pulling at her for what she knows is the last time, and Ty Lee and Yue look at her with tears streaming down their face and resignation carved into their features, Azula clutches at her bony shoulders and begs her not to leave.

When she opens her eyes once more, it is five years later, and Azula is kneeling above her—her eyes coals, her eyes skin white fire.

When she sucks in a breath, and it feel like she has breathed fire down her throat, Azula smiles like the madwoman that she is, saying, “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”

And then she collapses on top of her, and every fire in the room goes out.


	24. Death of a Good Man

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There are a great many bad people in the world.
> 
> Year Sixty-Eight, Summer

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Ty Lee

There are a great many bad people in the world.

A great many bad people in the Fire Nation.

People who deserve death—people who deserve worse than death.

But when Ty Lee sees Mai break her back by twisting just exactly wrong, she does not bother to find one.

She picks the first person she sees, drives her hand through his chest, and tears something free from within him.

He screams, and doubles over, his hand clawing at uselessly at the fabric of his shirt.

There is no hole there, of course, and no amount of grapsing will bring what she has torn from him _back_.

There is no amount of _anything_ , in fact, that will.

(This is not energybending, and there is no convenient _undo_ switch named Aang.)

He falls fully to the ground while she looks on, and wipes her right hand against her pink robes.

He weeps in choking gasps, and claws at the ground.

When he finally stops struggling, his body lying still, she slips a foot under him, and flips him onto his back.

His eyes (that she recalls vaguely began as gold) are already slate grey, and his chest no longer rises with breath.

Before her eyes, his hair fades to brown, and his features begin to shift.

His face becomes more rounded, and his limbs begin to dwindle.

His chest swells, and his waist narrows.

His hands become small and dainty, his hair grows to fan around him.

His eyes focus, and he smiles up at her.

“Sister Ty—”

She lifts her foot, and drives it through his throat.

He shakes once, and dies, grey eyes still focused upon her.

Ty Lee allows herself a moment to stare upon the dead body at her feet.

Then she turns, and returns to her quarters.

There are more important things that need to be done.


	25. Of Hate and Ruin

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It has been eleven years since Mai last saw Azula.
> 
> Year Sixteen, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: References to physical assault in "Dealing with the Devil" (22)
> 
> Characters: Mai, Azula

It has been eleven years since Mai last saw Azula.

Sixteen since she was close enough to touch her.

Mai heaves a sigh, and raises her eyes to the ceiling.

Beside her lies the heavy crest of the Fire Lady.

Yue has not seen fit to strip it from her, and by law it still remains hers.

She drops her eyes to Azula’s sleeping form once more.

She doesn’t want it.

She never wanted it.

Her eyes drop down to the bruises that are only barely visible against the pale white of Azula’s neck.

They draw back up to the faint red splotches that are slowly forming in the smooth skin beneath her eyes.

 _This_ was what she gave her husband up for.

This is what she wept for.

She drops her head into her hands.

Just another one of Azula’s tricks.

Designed to break Zuko.

(Or, perhaps, to break _her_.)

She could go back to Zuko.

She’s certain of it.

But every time she closes her eyes, she can see nothing but Zuko, with his face twisted with hate, and his hands clenched wrapped around Azula’s neck—

She raises her head again and burns _this_ image of Azula into them.

Azula, face peaceful, chest softly rising and falling with breath.

Azula, _not_ choking around Zuko’s hands, Azula, not shaking with effort to draw breath.

She hopes that if she looks at _this_ Azula long enough, it can burn away the image of Azula’s body, still and unmoving at Zuko’s feet.

She rises her hand to her face, and wipes away the dampness she finds there.

“I hate you,” she says, wiping her hand on her robes.

“I hate everything about you.”

Just like that, Azula is suddenly awake, her golden eyes open and focused upon her.

Her lips curl into something mildly resembling her trademark smirk, and a rasping chuckles pulls itself from her throat.

“You’ve ruined everything,” Mai continues.

“Everything I’ve ever wanted.”

She feels tears hot on her face and she swipes at them angrily.

“Why’d you do it?”

She rubs harshly at her eyes with the heels of her hands.

“Was it worth it?”

Azula shifts on the bed, pushing herself up, and leaning back heavily onto the headboard, smirk not slipping from her face.

“I wanted you back,” she says, coughing her throat to clear it.

Her voice is rougher than it has ever been, and Mai blinks away the image of Azula choking around Zuko’s hands.

“That’s all.”

She can feel herself gaping.

She can feel her cheeks pulling as her face pulls itself into a grimace.

“That’s all?”

Her vision swims, and she feels her tears fall into her lap.

“That’s all.”

She can’t quite keep her strangled cry down, and it echoes harshly against the walls of the room.

She glares at Azula, and she knows that her face must be a mask of rage and hatred.

(Just like Zuko’s was.)

“I fucking hate you, Azula.”

Azula doesn’t so much as blink.

“I wish you were dead.”

Azula shifts against the headboard, and lifts her hands to either side.

“Then kill me,” she says, and Mai can’t _not_ notice that her hands shake with the effort it takes to keep them up.

“I won’t stop you, this time.”

When Mai makes no move to attack her, and her hands fall heavily back upon the bed.

“My daughter,” Mai says. “My children, my husband, my country.”

She buries her head in her hands, digging her hands deep into her hair.

“Just because you wanted me back?”

There is a long silence, before—

“Yes.”

Mai resist the urge to draw her blades.

To destroy something.

“I’ve missed you these sixteen years, Mai.”

Mai looks up from her hands and Azula is smirking at her like she’s still the princess, and Mai’s still the little noblegirl who doesn’t quite know how to smile.

“You’re irreplaceable.”

Azula’s existence is the source of everything that has ever gone wrong in Mai’s life.

Her daughter, her husband, her country.

But faced with Azula—smirking like she knows how much Mai wants her—

Mai leaves before she does something she’ll regret.

(Like fucking Azula into the bed.)

(Like letting Azula fuck _her_ into the bed.)


	26. Greener Pastures

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Zuko goes to visit his uncle.
> 
> Year Sixteen, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: References to physical assault in "Dealing with the Devil" (22)
> 
> Characters: Zuko, Iroh

Zuko goes to visit his uncle.

It is the only thing he can think of to do.

Ba Sing Se does not love him, but they tolerate his existence.

He has been good to them, these sixteen years.

He has acquiesced to their inceasingly aggregious demands.

They have their own warships now, and they have gotten to kill five of his father’s greatest generals.

Azula was the one thing he did not turn over.

(He knew that Ba Sing Se could not hold her.)

But the avatar claimed to have stripped her bending, and they were placated.

Zuko wonders if they would have been so placated had they known what it is to be stripped of your bending.

With a sigh, Zuko settles into a chair, and draws the tea his uncle has served him to his lips.

His uncle sits across from him, silent, and sips at his tea as well.

He can’t know yet.

Zuko doubts the word has even reached the last of the Fire Nation’s islands.

But he looks at Zuko like he knows.

He looks at Zuko like he understands, and like he’s disappointed.

He gave Zuko the same look when he came to visit after Ty Lee stole his bending from him, and broke his sister out of her prison.

(Her asylum.)

(There is little difference.)

Zuko returns his tea to the saucer before him.

“How is business, uncle?”

His head feels light, his topknot and crown long gone.

It reminds him of how it was, the last time he was in Ba Sing Se—the last time he was in this tea shop.

“It is good—” he pauses, meeting Zuko’s for a long moment before he continues, “Lord Zuko.”

It is the only title that remains with him, now.

And it is one even Yue would have trouble stripping from him.

(Azula remained Lady Azula even after he banished her and pulled her from the line of succession, after all.)

(No royal decree can strip them of their royal blood.)

“You do not look well, Lord Zuko.”

That’s because he is not.

His hands shake as he reaches for his tea.

“Tell me what has happened, Lord Zuko.”

So Zuko does.

He tells Iroh that Azula has been Yue’s firebending master since she was eight years old, and that Yue has known who she is since she was eleven.

He tells Iroh that Yue believes he is a shame to his nation and his people, and looks at him with hard disdan that look so much like Azula.

He tells Iroh that Mai has banished him, and never wishes to see him again.

(He does not tell Iroh that he wrapped his hands around his sister’s neck and tried to choke the life out of her.)

And when he is finished, he accepts Iroh’s arm around his shoulder, and weeps into Iroh’s green tunic.

The other tennants stare, but Iroh pays them no mind, rubbing soft circles into Zuko’s back.

“It’ll all be alright, Lord Zuko,” he says.

It won’t be.

But Zuko allows himself to be comforted, and allows himself to pretend.


	27. Reconciliations

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mai goes back.
> 
> Year Sixteen, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Trigger warnings: Suicidal thoughts, attempted suicide, references to physical assault in "Dealing with the Devil" (22)
> 
> Characters: Mai, Azula, Ty Lee

Mai goes back.

Of course she goes back.

She never _could_ stay away.

(She’s lucky that Ty Lee took her away before Mai’s will could break, and she went to see Azula in the asylum.)

When she returns, Azula is not alone.

Ty Lee is with her.

Mai watches from the shadows of the doorway, hidden from view.

All traces of Azula’s royal arrogance that draws Mai to her even now—is gone.

Her face is lined, and tired, and, for the first time, she actually looks her age.

(Thirty-two, next month.)

She sags into Ty Lee, and allows Ty Lee to slide her down the bed, so she is laying down once more.

“ _Azula_ ,” Ty Lee is whispering.

“ _What did you do?_ ”

Her voice is—heartbroken.

Mai realizes she has never heard it before.

Mai expects Azula to laugh.

Make some sort of cutting remark.

_Victim blaming, Ty Lee?_

_How delightfully old-fashioned_.

But she just closes her eyes, and leans her head into Ty Lee’s chest.

Ty Lee’s hand rises to Azula’s hair and she releases a choked cry.

Ty Lee’s head falls until her nose is resting on Azula’s hair, and her entire body shakes.

After a long moment, Azula’s hands wrap themselves around Ty Lee’s shaking body, and she pulls Ty Lee’s body tightly to her.

And it is only as Mai watches that it finally occurs to her.

That she finally manages to reconcile the unmoving Azula that lay at her brother’s feet and the knowledge that Azula that could have stopped him at any time.

(That Azula _could_ have stopped him—but _didn’t_.)

(And all that entails.)

Her knees almost give out from beneath her.

“Would you have stopped him?” Ty Lee chokes out.

“If Mai hadn’t come—would you have stopped him?”

There is a long pause.

Then—

“No.”

Ty Lee screams, and Mai has to grab the solid wood of the doorway to keep from collapsing in shock.

 _Azula_.

 _Azula_ , who had enough fire in her blood to set the entire Fire Nation aflame—

Azula, who still has the _capability_ of setting every Fire Nation island aflame—

Azula, who has committed the coup of the century—

(Azula, who has committed the coup of the millennia—)

Just because she felt like it—

Ty Lee’s voice finally fades to muted, muffled sobs, and her arms pull Azula even closer.

In her arms, Azula’s eyes blink slowly, and when she meets Mai’s gaze, her eyes are remarkably neutral.

They are not arrogant.

They are not hostile.

They aren’t—

Anything.

Mai leaves before she gets sick all over the floor.

(Mai will share a palace with Azula for the next two years, but they will not see each other until Mai awakens in the bed Ty Lee shares with Azula to Azula’s hand on her cheek.)


	28. Of Mad Men and White Flames

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> There is a tribe, deep withing the northern mountains, that makes camp beside an eternal fire.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: OFC, Zaheer, P'li

There is a tribe, deep within the northern mountains, that makes camp beside an eternal fire.

It burns directly upon the earth, and does not move, day after day, year after year.

(Although they do not know this, this fire also does not move century after century, harmonic convergence after harmonic convergence.)

They do not worship the eternal fire.

They simply make camp beside it.

It cooks meat well, and keeps a space of about one hundred feet by one hundred feet liveable, even in the harshest of winters.

Since the advent of humanity, there has always been a people that has taken camp beside it, but they have only been at its side for three thousand years.

Maybe less.

One day, deep in the arctic summer, it flashes a bright white, and burns their meat ashes, and sets two of their sleeping bags on fire.

This is not something that has ever happened before.

It is sometimes large, sometimes small—sometimes red, sometimes blue, and sometimes green—but it has never before been _white_.

(Nor hot enough to reach sleeping bags set five feet away.)

After they put out the fires, it has already returned to its usual size and color.

In the air around them, they can feel that something is different.

But they still need to eat, and they still need to be kept warm, so they put more meat on the fire, and lie out two more sleeping bags.

Three days later, when the fire is small and the only one left in the camp is the incredibly pregnant Nuvuk, a man approaches their camp.

His feet are bare, and he wears a bizarre brown tunic that she does not recognize.

She glances at his uncovered feet, and bare arms, and wonders how he is not dead.

He bows to her, and she makes a weak effort of bowing back, and then he speaks to her in a language she does not understand.

But he gestures at the fire, and she assumes that he is asking if her can use it to warm himself, because he is a fool and is wearing next to nothing.

(It is _cold_ today.)

She nods, and gestures at it in a way she hopes is vaguely affirmative.

The man bows again, this time much deeper, with his fists pressed together before him.

(She assumes it is respectful, but honestly does not care either way.)

She hopes he’ll do it quickly, because she does not wish to treate him for frostbite.

It is a nasty, unpleasant process, and she does not think she knows him well enough to cut off his fingers.

But he does not move closer to the fire.

(Because he is mad—anyone who would walk these mountains without shoes clearly is.)

He spreads his legs and begins to make weird motions she does not understand with his arms.

He keeps talking in that language she cannot comprehend, and she wishes she could tell him that waving his hands like that isn’t going to help with the frostbite he is definitely going to be getting.

But then the wind starts to whip about her, and the fire before her suddenly flares.

Her hair is also blown into her face, and she has to reach up with both of her hands to keep it from her face as the wind grows more and more intense.

The fire roars and blazes and flares and becomes the largest she has ever seen it.

It takes her a moment to realize that it is the bizarre man who is still not frostbitten that is causing the wind to blow, and that it is that wind that is causing the fire to grow like it is.

(She did not know wind could do that, but she supposes it is not so surprising.)

After the fire is massive and man-sized the man’s movements suddenly shift, and the winds become calmer.

Nuruk is finally able to lower her hands from her hair, and she watches in wonder as the color of the flames of the fire before her begin to change.

It turns green, and gold, and blue, and purple and colors she has never seen it burn before.

(Colors she has never seen at _all_ before.)

The winds rage for one last instant, the fire burns a bright, blinding white, and the man suddenly stops.

His hands are shaking with exertion, his chest is heaving with breath, and his arms are coated with sweat.

(If she still believed him to be human, she would be getting particularly worried.)

(His chest is largely bare, and coated in sweat.)

(Were he of man, he would be dead in minutes.)

(But he clearly is not, so she does not worry.)

She turns her gaze back to the fire—still tall, and burning a blinding white—

Just in time to see a figure emerge from the flames.

At first, it is shapeless, its only recognizeable feature two massive legs and vaguely cylindrical body.

But then, slowly, it begins to resolve itself, the blinding white fading and the constant flicker of flame fading into solid form.

And then—

And then there is a massive naked woman standing before her.

(The rest of her tribe are _never_ going to believe her.)

Directly before her, in fact.

Her face right at eye level with—

Well, Nuruk doesn’t think too hard about that.

(She does think about how remarkably pale the massive woman’s skin is, though.)

(Not as pale as the man, of course—but _his_ skin isn’t a foot from her face and also _everywhere_.)

The woman looks down at her with blazing red eyes (eyes that are the color of the fire behind her) before turning to the man and breathing out a word Nuruk can only assume is the man’s name.

(She is tempted to make a new word meaning _idiot_ out of it, but, looking at his face, she can’t quite bring herself to do it.)

The man smiles an incredibly relieved smile as his chest heaves and his arms shake, and whispers a word that Nuruk assumes is the woman’s name.

(Nuruk finally notices that the wild heat playing on her face is not the _fire_ at all, and something deep within her stirs.)

And then the two are in each other’s arms, and it is remarkably sweet until it very quickly is _not_.

Nuruk clears her throat awkwardly, and they both (thankfully) stop, and look at her.

(Although, she notices, neither of them look particularly apologetic.)

The man seems to finally realize the woman’s nakedness and tries to shrug out of his tunic.

(Because he is mad, and apparently immune to the cold.)

But the woman gives him an incredulous look (she is a head taller than him, maybe two—it wouldn’t even begin to cover anything important), and he puts it back on.

Nuruk blindly gropes about beside her and produces a blanket.

The pair blink at her before the woman moves forward, slips it from her fingers, and wraps it around her shoulders.

(It is a man’s blanket, large enough for a grown man to wrap completely around himself, and it does not _quite_ reach her ankles.)

Then the man moves forward, and kneels before her.

He takes her hands in his and says something _very_ earnestly that she does not even begin to comprehend.

But he seems to be satisfied with it, and his expression softens for a moment before taking to his feet once more.

The woman simply gazes at Nuruk for a long moment before leaning forward, slipping her hand from the folds of the blanket, and places her hand over Nuruk’s on her swollen stomach.

Warmth spreads through Nuruk at her touch, and she feels as if a fire has been lit within her.

The woman’s face softens and she gives her a small smile.

(With it, her face of harsh edges and sharp lines softens into something that actually approaches being pretty rather than predatory, and dangerous.)

Her black hair falls over her face, and she stands up once more, using her revealed hand to brush it lightly back over her ears.

She takes a step back, and she turns back to the man that created her from fire.

He leans into her and whispers something Nuruk, once again, cannot understand.

The woman turns her head down to him, and gives him the same smile she gave Nuruk.

He slips closer to her, sliding his hands within the blanket Nuruk gave them, and the woman wraps it around them.

Their heads tilt together, and this time, their kiss is remarkably chaste.

Then, in an explosion of dust and snow, they rocket into the sky.

Nuruk’s jaw drops open, but when she turns her gaze to follow them up, she immediately regrets it.

(The blanket is short, and from below it covers exactly _nothing_.)

She turns her gaze back to the fire before her, and watches as it rises and falls with her breath.

(Maybe the tribe will believe her, after all.)


	29. The Lost Ones

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He does not see her coming.
> 
> Year Eighty-Five, Fall

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Characters: Zaheer, Ty Lee

He does not see her coming.

He is the greatest airbender that has ever been, and he can feel a single leaf fall from half a mile away—

But he does not see her coming.

She finds him in a rare moment when he is alone—away from guards, away from politicians, and away from scheming spirits.

(Away from P’li.)

(And for that he is thankful—she is not known for her mercy.)

Her small hand closes around his elbow, and he feels _fear_.

Since he has returned to the land of the living, he has been attacked by armies intent upon his death—he has been surrounded by five men and women with the power of gods—he has reached into the unreachable realm, and taken P’li _back_ —but when her hand closes around his arm, an unnatural chill crawls its way up his arm, and he feels _fear_.

He feels cold, hard terror.

His body moves on his own, wind screams in through the windows, and his blade of wind shears the metal hallway clean in two.

But when he turns, grey eyes are staring up at him, completely unharmed.

(Not so much as a hair out of place.)

When she breathes the wind her breath creates tears at him from the inside out, and he can feel the hollowness within her.

(Azula sleeps with this woman, he can’t help but think.)

(How does she not go mad at her very _presence_?)

This is the woman who ripped half the spirit out of the _avatar_ when he was _fully realized_ , and at his _most powerful_.

(When he was the kind of powerful that can tear continents apart.)

(Zaheer has stared into Korra’s eyes now, after she is in complete control of his abilities.)

(She is a horrible, terrible force, and he regrets not being able to permanently end that cycle.)

This is the woman who tore half the spirit out of the avatar, and then let him _live_.

“Ty Lee.”

She smiles up at him.

Her smile is innocent, and pure.

(But he is not fooled.)

“Zaheer.”

He knows why she is here.

He can _feel_ it.

Her hollowness resonates within him.

Her hollowness is _his_ loss.

Her hollowness, her agony, is the _wind_ ’s agony.

(If the White Lotus and Aang weare monsters, Azulon was worse.)

(Zaheer hopes Ursa’s poison was excruciating—because the man deserves to die a thousand deaths.)

But deep within her, he can feel it.

The barest echoes of the wind’s power.

The tail end of a spirit that has not quite been torn completely from her.

(The tail end of a spirit that _could not be_ torn completely from her.)

She says nothing, wide grey eyes boring into his own.

(And he can see the desperation in them.)

(She has been without spirit for longer than he has been _alive_.)

He knows what it will take.

Just as he knows how to walk on air, how to bend the wind to his will, and how to take breath into his lungs.

Looking down at her, and feeling the agony of seperation (so much worse than anything the White Lotus, Aang or Amon ever managed to create), he wonders if this is the reason he has been returned to this world.

If it was to reclaim _her_.

(He knows it is not, of course.)

(But he wonders all the same.)

He raises his hands, and takes a step forward as she leans her head back, and lets her body relax ( _Control is an illusion—Freedom is surrender_ ).

(She has never felt the wind’s touch, but she already understands it implicitly.)

(He cannot help but feel envy.)

It is only as he presses his left thumb to her sternum and his right thumb to her forehead that he notices it.

(A single, red leaf, floating on the wind.)

And then he cannot think of anything at all.

If he thought that Ty Lee’s hollowness was painful at three feet away—

If he thought the wind on her breath was terrible, and unnatural—

If he thought the agony of the wind was bad—

That was nothing.

Not compared to this.

(This is the woman the tore the bending from the avatar himself, and was still left hollow.)

She sucks him in.

His air, his wind, his _everything_.

He can feel his mouth fall open in a silent cream, and he can feel his spirit pulling at him—tearing him apart at the seams.

He screams.

(What made him think this was a good idea?)

(What made him think that this was a thing that could possibly be _done_?)

He screams, until the metal of the hallway vibrates with him, and then he screams some more.

But then he feels it.

The almost imperceptible weight upon his right hand.

(Just heavy enough, he knows, to be a single leaf.)

And just like that, he is free from agony once more.

His spirit snaps back into his body (he does not think of what would have happened had the leaf not come), and the wind around him suddenly whips itself into a scream.

Beneath his hands, Ty Lee’s body is rigid, her mouth thrown open and her eyes wide.

From her eyes and mouth do not pour the pure white light that pours from his own, but an all encompassing blackness.

(She is sucking the light from the air from around her, he realizes.)

(She was sucking away _his_ light, he realizes.)

But now the wind screaming about him takes its place, and its slams into her.

She is torn from him (he is thrown away from her) and she is lifted into the air.

The red leaf flutters off of his hand, and the wind screams into her.

And, slowly but surely, he watches as the blackness pouring from her eyes fills (he _feels_ as her horrible emptiness is filled).

And then, suddenly, pure, brilliant white light pours from her eyes.

And, suddenly, she is Ty Lee no more.

She is Taliba (how could he have forgotten?)—

Daughter of not Nichika and Suemi, but Ibrahim and Kaley—

Born not to the noble Tans, but to the Eastern Sanbending Nomads, three months before their untimely demise.

Taliba’s skin is not pale, but lightly tanned, her hair not wavy and light brown, but pin-straight and jet black, and her body is not small and voluptuous, but long, and elegant.

(Her eyes, he is sure, are now the beautiful and pure grey of air, and not the slate grey of nothing at all.)

Taliba.

She is beautiful, and whole once more.

But the wind does not die down, continuing to scream and hold her in the air, and Zaheer knows what will happen next.

(He has seen it before.)

(He has experienced it before.)

He takes a step back.

(Just as Yue had done for him—)

But then there is a flash of light—

(He is not the only one present—)

And it is as if a hole has been punched in the world.

His feet slam into the ground and he can feel every wind on the planet _die_.

Taliba tumbles from the air before him, and a pair elegant, pale hands materialize beneath her just in time to keep her from crashing into the floor.

(The light pouring from Taliba’s eyes has faded, and he sees an instant of her new (old) grey eyes before they slip closed.)

The woman kneeling beside Taliba carefully gathers Taliba’s body in her arms before standing, and, when she stands, he catches a single glance at a pair of hard, gold eyes, and a face that betrays no emotion.

 _Mai_.

His knees give out from beneath him, and the metal is hard and unforgiving beneath him.

Mai—mother of Yue.

His body collapses forward, and his forehead slams into the metal at her feet.

Mai—wife of Zuko.

(Mai—lover of Azula.)

He can feel blood beginning to pool around his head.

(He is not invincible.)

(But he has bigger problems.)

Mai—second cousin of _Zhao_.

(The Moonslayer.)

His lungs finally still, and he is frozen in place.

(He is a leaf on the wind—powerless to move without its power.)

He will remain there until P’li finds him, six minutes later.

(Mai will be six minutes gone.)

She will remove the knife that has pinned the leaf to the metal wall, and he will be able to breathe once more.

(He will be able to move once more.)

She will not ask him what happened, and he will not volunteer the information.

But she will take him in her arms, and carry him back to their rooms.

He will not see Taliba again.

(And Mai will never firebend again.)


End file.
